At a moment when environmental challenges call for both clarity and imagination, the Words for the Earth endowment is celebrating work that explores how people understand, engage with, and tell stories about the natural world. The Department of English is proud to name Doug Cloud, Joanna Doxey, Ashley Davies, and Cindy O’Donnell-Allen (with collaborators Jessica Jackson and Josh Zaffos) as the 2026–2027 award recipients, honoring projects that span research, creative practice, and community collaboration. Learn more about their work, below.
Doug Cloud, Associate Professor of English
Doug Cloud’s monograph in progress, Project Eveningland: Deliberation Across Difference on American Hiking Trails, examines how hikers engage in conversation, disagreement, and reflection while moving through shared landscapes on American trails. With support from the Words for the Earth award, Cloud will conduct field research along the Colorado Trail and the Appalachian Trail, with funding also supporting graduate research assistance. Through this work, the project explores what Cloud calls “wild deliberation”—informal, place‑based exchanges that shape how people think about difference, community, and their natural surroundings.
Joanna Doxey, Instructor and Advisor with the CSU Honors Program and College of Liberal Arts
In April 2026, Joanna Doxey’s second book of poetry, Unfruitful—an ecopoetic reflection on drought, development, and the intersections of the personal and political in Northern Colorado—was published by Middle Creek Publishing. With support from the Words for the Earth award, she will host a public poetry reading and book launch at Wolverine Farm, bringing CSU faculty, staff, students, and community members together for a shared conversation about environmental crisis and creative response.
Ashely Davies, Master Instructor
Building on work begun during the “Ghana: Youth Development, Transnational Perspectives” study abroad program, Ashley Davies’s project supports collaborative storytelling with Ghanaian youth, artists, and activists who are using creative expression to challenge stereotypes and represent their communities on their own terms. With support from the Words for the Earth award, Davies will help produce a photo book created with participants from The Good Tree after‑school program and facilitate the development of a transnational zine documenting how art functions as a form of resistance, reflection, and place‑based knowledge. Centering community voices and creative practice, the project uses storytelling to deepen cross‑cultural understanding and highlight the relationship between environment, identity, and lived experience.
Cindy O’Donnell-Allen, Professor
Jessica Jackson, Associate Professor
Josh Zaffos, Communications Specialist
NoCo Story Digs is a collaborative, interdisciplinary project led by Cindy O’Donnell‑Allen (English), Jessica Jackson (History), and Josh Zaffos (Anthropology/Geography) that brings northern Colorado communities together to explore environmental history through storytelling and hands‑on engagement with local materials. With partial support from the Words for the Earth award, the team will pilot half‑day programs at area libraries, where youth, families, and community members work with artifacts, local histories, and creative literacy activities rooted in the region’s landscapes. The project centers community knowledge and expands how local stories about people and place are discovered and shared.
About the Endowment
Created by John Calderazzo and SueEllen Campbell, the Words for the Earth endowment supports efforts by faculty, students, and staff whose work addresses the pressing need to illuminate and protect the natural world and employs the skills and insights of literature and expression. To support the Words from the Earth endowment visit the English Department giving page and select the “Words for Earth Endowment” option.