Bio

Essayist, Fiction Writer, Poet, Emcee, DJ, Musician and Educator

Rasheena Fountain is an essayist and poet from Chicago's west side, now living in Seattle. Her work focuses on nature, environmental justice, Black environmental memory, decolonization, land, and Blackness. She has been published or is forthcoming in Hobart, Penumbra Online, Jelly Bucket, The Roadrunner Review, Crazyhorse, You Are Here: The Journal of Creative Geography, and more. Fountain received a 2021 Honorable Mention from the Trillium Arts “Miss Sarah” Fellowship for Black Women Writers. She has partnered with environmental organizations like the National Resource Defense Council to highlight Black stories through writing profiles about Black environmental professionals; and has worked as a digital communications manager for the Doris Duke Conservation Scholars program alumni network where she supported young environmental professionals of color as they acclimated to the environmental field. She is a former Walker Communications Fellow with the National Audubon Society. In 2018, Fountain started an online project, Climate Conscious Collabs, in response to the need for more Black environmental relationships in the media. This work has engaged a “nontraditional” environmental audience, as well as mainstream organizations like the North American Congress for Conservation Biology, which used her work during their annual conference in 2020. She has BA in Rhetoric from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a MA.Ed. in Urban Environmental Education from Antioch University Seattle. Fountain has a MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington Seattle, where she is currently a Ph.D. student in English literature and culture.