Rebecca Clarren has been awarded one of the most coveted fellowships in journalism for 2009. Her one-year project, funded by a $40,000 grant from the Alicia Patterson Foundation, will focus on “the unmitigated effects of oil and gas drilling” in the American West. Rebecca first wrote about this subject for Orion in “Voices from the Gas Fields,” in our November-December 2006 issue. “If you hadn’t assigned that story to me, this never would have happened,” she said. (Her most recent article for us “Pesticide Drift,” ran in the July-August 2008 issue.) She will write four articles on the subject for the foundation’s magazine, the APF Reporter.