Mary Annaïse Heglar

Mary is known for her essays that dissect and interrogate the climate crisis, drawing heavily on her personal experience as a Black woman with deep roots in the South. Her work has appeared in New York Magazine, The Nation, The Boston Globe, Vox, Rolling Stone, and other outlets. Her work has also been featured in collections like All We Can Save, The World As We Knew It, The Black Agenda, Letters to the Earth, and Not Too Late. With investigative journalist Amy Westervelt, she is also the co-creator of the now-retired Hot Take podcast and newsletter. In 2020, she was selected as the inaugural writer in residence at Columbia University's Earth Institute and has gone on to teach at Columbia University in New York and Tulane University in New Orleans. In 2020, she received a SEAL Environmental Journalism award. She is based in New Orleans, but her heart is in Mississippi and her soul is in Birmingham.