AILSA ROSS writes about people, place, and art for Outside, The Guardian, the BBC, Longreads, National Geographic Traveler, JSTOR Daily, ARTnews, Orion, the Writers’ Union of Canada, and many others. Her work’s been syndicated by Cambridge University Press.

In the autumn of 2019, with the Writers’ Trust of Canada, she was the writer-in-residence at Berton House in the Yukon. In 2022, she was an artist-in-residence in Jasper National Park. In 2018 she was a Banff Centre resident of the Mountain and Wilderness Writing program under the Carlyle Norman Scholarship. Her research and creative writing has also been supported by the British Council, Orion Environmental Writers Workshop in Arizona, NES Artist Residency in Iceland, Outlandia in Scotland, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the Canada Council for the Arts.

A graduate of the University of Edinburgh’s law school, Ross does freelance fact-checking for various clients, including Harper’s and Harper’s Bazaar. She’s worked in communications for environmental nonprofits like the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative—which is how she became obsessed with writing about animals.

Ailsa grew up in the north of Scotland. She lives in the Canadian Badlands.