Carson Vaughan is a freelance journalist from central Nebraska with a focus on the Great Plains. He currently lives in Chicago with his wife and son.

His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, The Telegraph, The New Yorker (online), The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Paris Review Daily, Outside, Nebraska Quarterly, Flatwater Free Press, “Nebraska’s first independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on investigations and feature stories that matter,” and more.

His first book, Zoo Nebraska: The Dismantling of an American Dream, was published by Little A in April 2019. It earned a 2020 Nebraska Book Award for Nonfiction from the Nebraska Library Commission and was later adapted for an episode of NPR’s Snap Judgement podcast and radio show. His second book, Dream Job: Confessions of a National Geographic Photographer, a memoir for Joel Sartore, is forthcoming from National Geographic Books and Disney Publishing Worldwide. He is currently working on a travelogue through the Nebraska Sandhills for W.W. Norton and Company.