Cal Flyn is an award winning writer from the highlands of Scotland. In 2022, she was named a Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. She has been the winner of the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the John Burroughs Medal, and she was a finalist for the Wainwright Prize, the British Academy Book Prize, the Ondaatje Prize, and the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction.

Her first book, Thicker Than Water, which explored questions of colonialism and intergenerational guilt, was a Times book of the year. Her second book, Islands of Abandonment, was about the ecology and psychology of abandoned places. Her most recent book, THE SAVAGE LANDSCAPE: HOW WE MADE THE WILDERNESS, will be published by Viking on July 28, 2026.

She is the current Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Wesleyan University, deputy editor of the literary recommendations site Five Books, and has written for publications including The Guardian, Granta, National Geographic, and The Wall Street Journal.

We spoke with Cal Flyn on July 21, 2026 via Zoom.

Articles pertinent to this interview:

Giving nature a say: why Scottish marine scientists appointed the ocean to their board https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/jul/14/scottish-marine-scientists-ocean-board-trustees

Feds transfer grizzly bear management to states https://mountainjournal.org/feds-transfer-grizzly-bear-management-to-states/

Delisting or Destruction? New grizzly bear rules renew debate over Endangered Species Act protections https://mountainjournal.org/new-grizzly-bear-rules-highlight-struggle-over-endangered-species-act/

‘It’s total devastation’: inside the Amazonian war against illegal gold mining https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/20/brazil-gold-rush-illegal-mining-settlements-indigenous-lands

New wolf estimate could reshape Montana’s hunting season https://mountainjournal.org/montana-wolf-population-shrinking-now-fish-wildlife-and-parks-wants-to-limit-the-wolf-hunt/

Why Irish Stone Huts Survived 1,400 Years While Modern Homes Crumble in 50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeL-Jb0nbTs