About

Douglas Haynes is a nonfiction writer and poet. His 2017 nonfiction book Every Day We Live Is the Future: Surviving in a City of Disasters is a cautionary tale of urban inequality and the climate crisis that recounts two Nicaraguan families’ quests to reinvent their lives in Managua, one of the world’s most disaster-prone cities. Douglas’s essays and journalism have appeared in Orion, Longreads, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Progressive, Witness, Boston Review, North American Review and dozens of other publications. He is also the author of a poetry chapbook, Last Word. His many awards include a Fund for Environmental Journalism grant and a fellowship at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee’s Center for 21st Century Studies. In 2021-2022, Douglas is a UW System Fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin Madison.

Douglas grew up in Iowa and studied at the University of Wisconsin Madison and Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He went on to study literature and languages in Germany, Ireland, and Guatemala while working as a dishwasher, farmhand, freelance writer, and English teacher. After a decade away from the Upper Midwest, he returned to teach at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, where he is a professor of English. He teaches creative nonfiction and poetry writing and the environmental humanities. He also regularly presents public readings and talks across the U.S. and abroad.

Douglas lives with his wife and two daughters in Madison, Wisconsin between a corn field and Lake Monona.