After dropping out of art school in 1994, Ephraim Payne gained life experience campaigning for grassroots environmental groups, working as a bike messenger, and becoming a father. Following a lifelong dream of becoming a writer, he enrolled at Lane Community College and won a prestigious Jack Kent Cooke Foundation undergraduate scholarship to support his study at the University of Oregon.
Ephraim combines a dual major in magazine journalism and environmental studies to prepare himself as a writer on environmental issues for regional and national publications. He believes that through this work he can help bridge a gap between environmental activists and working people.In 2007, Ephraim was awarded a Snowden Internship award through the UO’s Charles Snowden Program for Excellence in Journalism and was nominated to the national collegiate journalism honors society, Kappa Tau Alpha.Ephraim studied environmental immersion journalism in the Galapagos where he did the initial investigation and reporting for the Flux story, "Caught in the Middle." His focus on forestry and wildfire issues led to his story "Old Growth, New Ideas."