Writer, Journalist, Activist

Carolyn McConnell has an eclectic background as a trained philosopher, journalist, and lawyer.

She holds an MFA from the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program and master’s degrees in philosophy and in nonfiction writing from Johns Hopkins University, as well as a law degree from the University of Washington. She was a senior editor at YES! Magazine and her writing has been published in Jacobin, Salon, the Iowa Review, Crosscut, Seattle Metropolitan, Labor Law Journal, and elsewhere. Find her articles here.

Carolyn drafted legislation to revise Washington State’s unemployment system to better serve care providers and worked with the Unemployment Law Project to advocate for these changes. Several of her proposals for regulatory changes have been adopted by the state’s unemployment agency.

Carolyn has long been engaged in social activism. She was for eight years vice president of her union, Local 19 of the National Labor Relations Board Union, and is a long-time board member of the North Cascades Conservation Council. She is involved in resistance to attacks on public services and public servants, through the Federal Unionists Network (FUN). In 2025, she filed suit against the United States government for violating her First Amendment rights to speak and freely associate after it punished her for publishing an op-ed.