Sustainability Writing Awards
The UW–Madison Sustainability Writing Awards, hosted by the Office of Sustainability, are intended to inspire conversations about how writing can bring together people with different experiences to reflect and act within the context of the global climate crisis.
2025 Sustainability Writing Awards
Applications for the 2026 Sustainability Writing Awards will open in the fall.
2025 Theme: Climate Futures
The 2025 Sustainability Writing Awards invites students to consider the following theme: climate futures. Last year, applicants were invited to expand on the theme of realities by exploring their distinctive, place-based experiences of global climate change, which might include the repeated 100-year storms in the Midwest, intensifying coastal flooding on the eastern seaboard, or record-shattering heat in many countries across the world.
Building on our last year’s theme, we call on students to imagine new climate futures. These futures can be hopeful, dystopic, techo-utopic, pastoral, degrowth-oriented, fantastical, or local. In a moment that distorts our ability to look forward, we hope to focus on the implications of the present, extrapolating them outward. How do you hope to affect our climate futures? How is your view of the future affected by your particular geography? How have current and past climate realities in your life shifted your perspective of the future?
Both creative nonfiction and fiction writing will be accepted. For fiction, please make sure to ground your work in existing realities and clearly convey the extrapolation from our present moment to your imagined future one.
Deadline: December 31st, 2025
“Adon”
By Ross O’Donnell
Ross O’Donnell (he/they) is a senior studying Environmental Science with certificates in Environmental Soil Science, Science Communication, and Environmental Studies. He conducts research on cycad anatomy and hydraulic function at the botany eco-physiology lab, and is currently working on a thesis on the subject. Ross loves working with plants on and off campus, and frequently visits and volunteers at the UW Arboretum, as well as growing his own microgreens. After graduation, he hopes to continue working with plants and native ecosystems, as well as finding more time to write.
“The Metal Grown in her Nursery”
By Devin Guthrie
Devin Guthrie is a current senior graduating in spring 2026. He is double majoring in environmental science and environmental studies, with certificates in sustainability, American Indian & Indigenous Peoples studies, and leadership. He is interested in urban ecology, conservation/restoration, environmental justice, eco-futurism, and astronomy. He is from Milwaukee, and some of his hobbies include reading science-fiction books, stargazing, and creating terrariums. A fun fact about him is that his favorite animal is an opalescent nudibranch!
“Songbirds and Other Farewells”
By Lily Smogor
Lily Smogor (she/her) is a second-year undergraduate majoring in Political Science and Environmental Studies with a certificate in American Indian & Indigenous Studies. She plans to pursue a career in environmental law and enjoys writing in her spare time. Lily is from Illinois and has a deep interest in water policy and climate adaptation.
“Where Health and Heat Meet”
By Veronica Goveas
Veronica Goveas (she/her) is a senior studying Biology with honors and a Global Health certificate. She has conducted research in Parkinson disease and puberty initiation in rhesus macaques and has co-authored a published paper in the Journal of Cardiovascular Development and Disease. Veronica is deeply involved in community service, including volunteering with the Rape Crisis Center and UW Health, and holds leadership roles such as Philanthropy Director for the Senior Class Office. After graduation, she plans to pursue a career in medicine.
“Understanding Sustainability Through Privilege and Survival”
By Maisha Islam
Maisha Islam (she/her) is a fourth-year undergraduate double majoring in Biology and Life Science Communication with a certificate in Global Health. Outside of class, she tutors at a middle school, volunteers at a fire department and hospital, and conducts Alzheimer’s research. After graduation, she plans to pursue a career in either rural medicine or public health.
“The American Dream Was Buried in Southern Utah”
By Lily Smogor
Lily Smogor (she/her) is a first-year undergraduate student double-majoring in Environmental Studies and Political Science. She puts these passions to work in campus life by being a staff writer for the Wisconsin Undergraduate Law Review and serving as a competing member of the Wisconsin Speech and Debate Society. Lily spends her free time writing short horror fiction and reading about the Colorado River. She hopes to continue her environmental advocacy after graduation by attending law school and pursuing a career as an environmental lawyer.
“A Rusty Resolution”
By Madelyn Anderson
Madelyn Anderson (they/she) is a second-year undergraduate double majoring in Science Communication and Environmental Studies. They combine these passions outside of the classroom by serving as science editor at The Daily Cardinal, volunteering at local farms, and working towards environmental equity at the Climate Solutions for Health Lab. In their free time, they enjoy creating eco-art, and they hope to continue communicating about environmental issues through multiple mediums after graduation.
Bird, Tree, and Me: Resolutions for the Climate Crisis
By Scott Hershberger
Scott Hershberger (he/him) is a second-year M.S. student in Life Sciences Communication. For his thesis, he is researching how Wisconsin Extension professionals approach climate change conversations with communities across the state. He is also a project assistant with the Wisconsin Extension Maple Syrup Program, where he researches the social science of maple syrup production and created a climate change adaptation menu for Midwestern maple syrup producers. Previously, he was a science writer at Scientific American, Fermilab, and the American Mathematical Society. After graduating, he aims to work in communications to advance local climate solutions. Website.
“Her historic snowfall: when will it be the last in her lifetime?”
By Hailey Sewell
Hailey Sewell (she/her) is a third-year undergraduate majoring in English (Creative Writing) and Environmental Studies with a certificate in Sustainability. She is currently working alongside the Office of Sustainability and the Lakeshore Preserve in developing programs to connect students and staff to the natural environment around campus to benefit mental health. Hailey is also hoping to get more involved with the ASM Sustainability Committee’s education campaign, which is fighting for a mandatory sustainability course for incoming students. After college, she strives to inspire change through her art about global climate injustices and the need for rapid environmental policy.
Scroll down to read about the theme for 2022.
“Resilience in the archive; Or, reflections on a 100-year-old lollipop”
By Andrew McDonnell
Andrew McDonnell is a graduate student entering his final semester in the Library and Information Science program with a concentration in Archives in a Digital Age. He is also the PA Librarian in the Journalism Reading Room and directs the archives and a media studies program at Wayland Academy. He has authored two novels, All Animals Vs. All Humans and November 123, and his shorter writing has appeared on Wisconsin Public Radio, Notre Dame Magazine, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and A Prairie Home Companion. Beyond the iSchool, he hopes to help connect students, scholars, and the public to great physical and digital collections.
“The resilience of mallards, and us”
By Allyson Mills
Allyson Mills is a senior majoring in English and Music Performance, with certificates in Environmental Studies, European Studies, and Leadership. Outside of class, she works as the Advancement Programs intern at the Wisconsin Foundation & Alumni Association. After graduation, she hopes to attend graduate school in Civil Society and Community Research and Environment and Resources. After college, she dreams of working for a nonprofit or in a higher education institution.
“‘Humans have arrived at the Mekong River’: The story of my grandmother and our future”
By Ben Yang
Benjamin Yang is a fourth-year undergraduate studying Civil and Environmental Engineering. He is the president of Engineers for a Sustainable World, an organization dedicated to providing hands-on sustainability projects and initiatives on campus, as well as a student intern at the Office of Sustainability, where he works on the Social Sustainability Coalition Team and Food Sustainability Working Group. He also does research for the Morgridge Center for Public Service to create a closed loop farming system for youth to grow their own strawberries.
2022 Awards Description
Our understanding of climate change, and how to subdue it, begins with the numbers and molecules of science. It also begins with things: electric grids, farms, giant steel windmills, oil rigs, smog, petroleum, melting glaciers, fires, and floods. But what about words? What can mere drops of ink, mere pixels, do against the sixth extinction, against the drought and fires and floods? Equations, methods, charts, large immovable objects—and words?
The inaugural UW–Madison Sustainability Writing Awards started with a simple premise: in the ongoing climate crisis, writing can inspire us, bring us together, and catalyze us to act. Thanks to the generosity of donors, the Office of Sustainability offered three $200 scholarships to undergraduate, graduate, and professional students who submitted essays on the topic of resilience. The topic drew a range of writing about resilience from ecological, personal, political, educational, and technological perspectives.
In his essay on the archive, Andrew McDonnell writes of how our resilience—in the smallest, most unexpected ways—makes us “agents of history.” He shows how archives preserve resilience both good and bad, and asks, “What will I leave behind? … How can I leave less behind?” Ben Yang considers how we leave behind legacies through the story of his Hmong grandmother, who survived persecution, fled to the United States, and collected plastic caps, soda cans, and prayers to build a future for herself and her family. Yang’s grandmother demonstrates how “resiliency is the quality of immersing oneself in a tedium that strives for change,” and Yang insists that her story can help us find passion, and endurance, in the continued and the everyday. Allyson Mills looks to the natural world to better see ourselves, as she identifies resilience in mallards she watches endure a storm at a pier on Lake Mendota. She incorporates research on how they cooperate and survive to suggest that their story might be ours, too, if we can learn to adapt, to “protect one another, and work to save our future.”
This year’s winning essays appeal for words in our climate crisis. Language is resilient: information and stories persist through centuries because of recorded syllables carrying hope, dreams, despair, and memories of what seemed to last forever. The winning writers show that words can bring us into confrontation with the pain and errors of the present and past—and maybe, also, allow us to imagine a different future.