About: Cal Flyn

Cal Flyn is a Scottish non-fiction writer. Her first book, Thicker Than Water, is about the settlement of Australia. It tells the story of a distant relative, Angus McMillan, who is believed to have been one of the ringleaders of the Gippsland massacres of Gunaikurnai aboriginal people. Her second book, Islands of Abandonment, is an exploration of places where nature is reclaiming lands once occupied by humans, such as Canvey Wick in Essex, and Chernobyl. Islands of Abandonment won the John Burroughs Medal for natural history writing. It was short-listed for the 2021 Wainwright Prize for writing on global conservation, the 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize and the British Academy Book Prize.