Author Reading | Life in the Pyrocene: California in the Time of Climate Change

Three distinguished writers, DJ Waldie, Daniela Molnar, and Ruben Martinez, read from their work as part of the PEN America World Voices Festival. Cultural historian D.J. Waldie—best known for Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir— reads from his forthcoming book Elements of Los Angeles: Essays on Earth, Water, Air, and Fire.  Poet and artist Daniela Naomi Molnar, writes about "ecology, grief, and the illusion of closure," reflecting on her flight from home in 2020 when her Portland house "was a tinderbox surrounded by flames." Ruben Martinez, author of Desert America: Boom and Bust in the New Old West, and one of our foremost chroniclers of migration, delves into our state’s extremes. Together these three writers will read from their works and share in their experience and art surrounding the ever-growing fire seasons of our times.

This program is co-presented with PEN America.