McKenzie Long is a writer and graphic designer who lives in the eastern Sierra Nevada.

Her nonfiction book This Contested Land: the Storied Past and Uncertain Future of America’s National Monuments was published by University of Minnesota Press in October 2022 and won gold for Ecology and Environment from Foreword INDIES.

While working on This Contested Land McKenzie won first place in Nowhere Magazine‘s 2018 “This Land is…” contest, was named the 2019 Terry Tempest Williams Fellow for Land and Justice at Mesa Refuge, was a two-time resident at Hypatia-in-the-Woods, and was selected for AWP’s 2020 Writer to Writer mentorship program where she worked with New York Times bestselling author Kathryn Aalto. In fall of 2025 she returned to AWP’s Writer to Writer program to serve in the role of mentor.  

In her day job as a graphic designer, McKenzie creates books and magazines for Wolverine Publishing, Mountaineers Books, and The American Avalanche Association.