Jayson Porter

Jayson Maurice Porter is an environmental writer and historian who received his PhD from Northwestern in 2022 and is a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. In addition to his academic work, he is writing a book tentatively titled Held: Multispecies histories of black relations to place and power.

More from Jayson Porter

Color illustration of a desert scene with a car in the foreground and storm clouds on the horizon

Distillations Magazine

Everyday Monsoons

Washes and other gaps in the Sonoran Desert.

Black and white photo of girl with a cotton plant

Distillations Magazine

Rings of Fire

Arsenic cycles through racism and empire in the Americas.

Group of eleven older men posing with a large taxidermy fish

Distillations Magazine

Fish Hacks

Often dismissed as a “trash fish,” the porgy anchors black maritime culture.