Debuts August 2025 — Ocean Beach
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Illustrated Guidebook to Ocean Beach Underscores Its Ecological Significance to the City of San Francisco
Scientist and surfer Eddy Rubin celebrates the inhabitants and phenomena that shape this dynamic coastal ecosystem perched at land’s end.
BERKELEY, CALIF. — The Pacific Ocean is the most significant geographical feature on the face of the earth, covering 30 percent of the planet’s surface—and it is at Ocean Beach that this colossus meets land in the city of San Francisco. Here at the western edge of the city, the confluence of waves, winds, and moon tides have given rise to a one-of-a-kind ecosystem beloved by surfers, locals, and tourists the world over. Ocean Beach: Fog, Fauna, and Flora, part love letter, part guidebook, is an illustrated primer on the atmospheric forces that shape this shoreline and the plant and animal life teeming in the sea, soaring overhead, and burgeoning forth from its sands.
Written by Eddy Rubin and illustrated by Greg Wright, Ocean Beach is divided into three sections that explore, in turn, the climatic conditions of the beach, the wildlife who populate it, and the plants that thrive in its coastal interface. Rubin reveals how the mighty California Current combines with northwesterly winds to create the city’s world-famous gray mist—Karl the Fog—which pours through the Golden Gate and blankets the beach’s outlying neighborhoods, lending San Francisco it’s cool summer temperatures and giving rise to the swells that have made Ocean Beach a surfer’s destination since the 1940s. Profiles of the beach’s animalian denizens—from the iconic gulls and sea lions to the lesser seen sand crabs and moon jellyfish—delight in each species’ quirks. And spotlights of local plant life range from the seaswept bull kelp to the hardy ice plant dotting the dunes.
Threatened by rising sea levels and ocean acidification, this delicate ecosystem offers a valuable reprieve from the metropolis to its east. Separated from the city by the Great Highway, recently repurposed as a pedestrian pathway by popular vote, Ocean Beach is an extraordinary strip of coastline the future of which will be shaped by civic policy and management. “The Ocean Beach of the future may look different from the one we know today,” says Rubin, “but its essence—a place of natural wonder, a refuge from urban life, and a reminder of our place in the larger ecosystem—can endure.” This book invites the reader to witness with wonder this wild retreat at the city’s outer rim, with a call to protect and conserve it for generations to come.
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Eddy Rubin is a longtime Ocean Beach enthusiast who has been walking, surfing, and foraging along the beach for decades. When not spending time at Ocean Beach, he led the Human Genome Project at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. There, Eddy oversaw the mapping of genomes for humans, Neanderthals, and dozens of animals, plants, and microbes. His awards include an honorary doctoral degree, membership in a royal society, and—a matter of great personal pride—election into the Ocean Beach Double Overhead Surf Association.
Greg Wright has lived on the west side of San Francisco and surfed at Ocean Beach for more than a decade. While spending his days working in technology, he has cultivated a passion for art and the beach’s fall and winter swells.
Debuts November 2025 — The ABCs of California's Native Bees
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
National Geographic Explorer Profiles California’s Native Bees from A to Z in New Image-Rich Guidebook
Conservation photographer, community scientist, and bee expert Krystle Hickman offers a primer on a selection of 26 bee species native to the Golden State
BERKELEY, CALIF. — There are nearly 3,000 bee species native to western North America, and over 1,600 of them reside in California—one of the most biodiverse regions in the world. National Geographic Explorer and celebrated community scientist Krystle Hickman offers a guide to a selection of these remarkable species alongside her stunning nature photography in The ABCs of California’s Native Bees.
Featuring 26 species, from the Agile Longhorn Bee to the Zone-tailed Banded-Mining Bee, Hickman’s primer on the Earth’s premier pollinators is a love letter to these busy bodies and a clarion call for their conservation. Native bees—as distinct from honey bees—are at risk of extinction due to climate change and habitat loss. They may be native to an area as small as a zip code or as large as an entire nation, though wherever they reside, they are integral to their surrounding ecosystems. The number of species native to California dwarfs the variety to be found in whole countries, such as France or Argentina, and rivals the biodiversity of the entire continent of Australia. This natural abundance of bees makes the Golden State significant terrain for entomologists. And since bees are an indicator species—whose absence or decline in population are often a first signal of ecosystem collapse—the study of bees is significant terrain for environmentalists writ large.
In the The ABCs of California’s Native Bees, Hickman profiles a handful of the species that underpin the ecologies of the Golden State. Each chapter profiles a distinct species, from the rare desert-dwellers to the storied bumble bees, and includes intricate photography, tips on identification, and details about each bee’s biome, preferred plantlife, traits, and seasonality. Through her anecdotes and observations, Hickman’s passions alight the reader’s enthusiasm, enjoining them on her quest to spread awareness around these minute but mighty insects.
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Krystle Hickman is a National Geographic Explorer and community scientist based in Los Angeles. With a passion for nature and an eye for artful photography, Hickman strives to elevate awareness of the decline of native bee species and shed light on their intricate and biodiverse ecosystems. Hickman’s commitment to conservation takes her across the globe, documenting rare native bees without resorting to any form of lethal collecting. Hickman’s influence extends beyond the lens: She has graced multiple television and online broadcasts, been interviewed on podcasts such as Ologies, presented at the 2024 United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP16) in Colombia, and lectured at colleges such as Harvard, UC Irvine, UCLA, and more. Learn more about her work at beesip.com.
Debuts October 2025 — California Rewritten
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
New Book Charts California’s 21st-Century Literary Canon
Knopf Editor John Freeman proposes the contours of a contemporary California canon, encompassing 49 West Coast writers and an iconic 70-year-old literary institution.
BERKELEY, CALIF. — For a state that has projected its studio-lot image across the globe, California has remained largely undersung in the world of letters, too often left to languish in the shadow of the East Coast’s literary hegemony. To rectify this peculiar imbalance, Knopf Editor John Freeman offers a thoroughgoing survey of the major voices and modern-day classics burgeoning out of the West Coast in his latest collection California Rewritten: A Journey Through the Golden State’s New Literature.
“Literature of so many kinds and so many genres from so many different types of people—at the highest level—has been coming out of California and from Californians for decades now,” says Freeman. In the last ten years alone, Californians have won more Pulitzers in literature than writers from any other region of the United States, he points out. Moreover, readers have a real appetite for these perspectives: Freeman, in his role as host for Alta Journal’s California Book Club, commands an audience of 20,000 members and counting, and California authors like Amy Tan and Tommy Orange perch on the New York Times bestseller lists for weeks and sometimes months on end.
In California Rewritten Freeman offers probing critical engagement with the writers whose works are defining this new West Coast sensibility. Across 50 essays collected from his writings for Alta, he features 49 authors and one keystone literary powerhouse that together comprise a 21st-century California canon. He spotlights the poets—Ada Limón, Claudia Rankine, Gary Snyder—whose voices defy the boundaries of the genre. He delves into the watershed works of the novelists—Percival Everett, Rachel Khong, Viet Thanh Nguyen—at the vanguard of a new firmament of American classics. And he explores the memoirists—Deborah Miranda, Javier Zamora, Maxine Hong Kingston—whose worlds offer a gripping, if sobering mirror, for our society.
Collectively these works address pressing concerns for our era: What is the meaning of a place, and how do we belong to it? How does the past imprison our present? What fears hobble our imaginations, and what kind of tomorrow could we possibly build if we liberated them? In short, Freeman, in this savvy and perceptive volume, shows why Californians deserve to be read the world over.
Praise for California Rewritten
“In California Rewritten, Freeman writes with singular precision and intelligence about new California literature, animating that mysterious relationship that unfolds when a writer’s imagination engages with place. In Freeman’s hands, California is a literary mecca, and each essay a revelation.”
—INGRID ROJAS CONTRERAS, author of The Man Who Could Move Clouds
“John Freeman’s crisp, incisive essays cast a wonderfully sensitive eye on a wide-ranging collection of people who’ve written about this state in novels, reportage, memoir, history, and more. Step aside, New York; the center of the American literary universe has moved here.”
—ADAM HOCHSCHILD, author of American Midnight
“Here is vindication of all that I have argued the last fifty years—that California has had and currently has the richest, the most literary tradition in the country, the most recent of which is so beautifully chronicled in this book. I know I’m not the only California writer to say, Thank you, John Freeman.”
—GREG SARRIS, author of The Forgetters and Grand Avenue
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John Freeman has hosted Alta‘s California Book Club since its founding in 2020 and is the author, most recently, of California Rewritten: A Journey Through the Golden State’s New Literature. He is an executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf, and he edited Freeman’s (2015–2023), a literary annual of new writing. His books include How to Read a Novelist and Dictionary of the Undoing, as well as the anthologies Tales of Two Americas, Tales of Two Planets, The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story, and Sacramento Noir. He is also the author of three poetry collections, Maps, The Park, and Wind, Trees. His work is translated into more than twenty languages, and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The New York Times. The former editor of Granta, he lives in New York.
Debuts October 2025 — Butterflies of the Bay Area and (Slightly) Beyond
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
All-Encompassing Guide Featuring Enchanting Portraits Celebrates the Butterflies of the Bay Area and (Slightly) Beyond
Self-taught butterfly obsessive Liam O’Brien shares his passion for these beloved and storied insects in this informative and surprisingly personal guidebook.
BERKELEY, CALIF. — Following an HIV diagnosis in 2000, thespian-turned-lepidopterist Liam O’Brien leaned into his passion for butterflies as a source of wonder. After decades of observing, counting, and (responsibly) capturing these scaled winged beauties, he became an ambassador for the species. In his debut book Butterflies of the Bay Area (and Slightly Beyond): An Illustrated Guide, O’Brien chronicles 135 varieties of butterfly with vim and vivid hand-painted illustrations to introduce readers to the breadth and beauty of butterfly biodiversity of this region.
With over 700 hand-drawn illustrations depicting both adult and caterpillar forms of each species, this book offers a stunning and romantic catalog of the region’s lepidoptera. Entries include habitats, host plants, life phases, and tips on where to find each species of butterfly. O’Brien also recounts the best butterfly walks of the Greater Bay Area, from Monterey to Marin, and offers tips for finding, photographing, and fighting for these storied bugs. Interwoven are insights from O’Brien’s own deepening fixation with butterflies and the plight of protecting them from endangerment.
Named a Local Hero by Bay Nature in 2014, O’Brien has led efforts to restore Variable Checkerspots to the Presidio, monitored the endangered Mission Blue butterfly in the Marin Headlands, and has run the San Francisco butterfly count for the last 25 years—in the region that boasts the largest density of counts in the nation. His meticulously illustrated survey of Bay Area butterflies springs from the conviction that naming the creature in front of you is the first move toward conservation.
“In this book, I’m aiming for something a little different from the classic field guide,” says O’Brien. “Here is a book that celebrates realistic paintings, pithy anecdotes, conservation, and the downright joy these bugs have given me. Given all of us.”
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Liam O’Brien is a self-taught lepidopterist and illustrator. He used to be a professional actor, having appeared in Les Misérables on Broadway, but shifted his powers of observation towards nature several decades back. He’s fascinated not only by butterflies but also by our relationships to them. He surveyed the county of San Francisco, where he lives, for which butterfly species remained in 2007 and 2009 and has been involved in the preservation and restoration of several local species throughout the Bay Area. O’Brien was the recipient of Bay Nature magazine’s Local Hero Award for Environmental Education in 2014. He lives in San Francisco. For more of his work, follow him on Instagram @robber_fly.
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Debuts November 2025 — In the Shadow of the Bridge
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sumptuously Photographed Art Book Showcases the Wild Beauty and Biodiversity of the Birds of the Greater Bay Area
Photographer Dick Evans and award-winning writer Hannah Hindley explore the natural and social histories of Bay Area birds and the conservation dilemmas they face.
BERKELEY, CALIF. — More than half of all avian species in the United States can be found in the long shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge. It is here that the 4,000-mile avian superhighway known as the Pacific Flyway, converges. Stretching from Alaska to Patagonia, this massive migratory channel is trafficked by over a billion birds every year, making the greater San Francisco Bay Area one of the most remarkably biodiverse regions for birds, and a destination for bird lovers the world over. In the Shadow of the Bridge: Birds of the Bay Area captures the pockets of wilderness that make these Bay Area cities a birder’s paradise and gives voice to the environmental dilemmas that imperil it.
Featuring over 200 full color photographs by Dick Evans and poetic prose by award-winning writer Hannah Hindley, In the Shadow of the Bridge details the enduring abundance of avian biodiversity of the San Francisco Bay bioregion. A stunning array of native bird species roost among the nutrient-rich waters of the Bay and the sprawling California Delta that feeds it, ecosystems which also attract millions more winged visitors along their migratory journeys every year. This estuary is the largest of the Pacific Coast—and also among the most modified in the nation, causing habitat loss for both local and migratory species. Over the last half century, diminishing terrain combined with other shifting climatic conditions has caused over 3 billion birds to disappear from these skies.
Divided into three sections, Evans and Hindley explore the histories, communities, and complex conservation issues that intersect to make the greater Bay Area a remarkable place for the study of birds, and a potent catalyst for their preservation and protection. Informed and guided by the expertise of Point Blue Conservation Science, a nonprofit leader in climate-smart conservation, Evans and Hindley’s survey of this biodiversity hotspot extends for hundreds of miles in every direction of the Golden Gate Bridge—northward to Russian River, inland to Sacramento, southward to Monterey, and oceanward to the remote Farallon islands, accessible only by conservation scientists. With awe and admiration, the authors delight in the splendor of these winged wonders as well as in the human capacity to care for them.
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Dick Evans became interested in photography as a graduate student at Stanford University and continued his practice throughout a fifty-five-year career in the global metals industry that took him all over the world. San Francisco always remained home base, though, and he now lives in the city with his wife, Gretchen. Evans is the author of the photography books San Francisco and the Bay Area: The Haight-Ashbury Edition, The Mission (an Indie Book Award Finalist), and San Francisco’s Chinatown.
Hannah Hindley is a wilderness guide and the recipient of the Thomas Wood Award in Journalism, the Ellen Meloy Desert Writers Award, and the Barry Lopez Prize in Nonfiction. She graduated from Harvard with degrees in English and evolutionary biology; she holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from University of Arizona. Her environmental essays can be found in Bay Nature, The Sun, Hakai, and more. Hannah writes about small creatures, big landscapes, and the scientists who love them.
Debuts November 2024 — Portrait in Red
New Memoir Recounts A Madcap, Globetrotting Romp to Discover the Secrets of a Discarded Painting
Offbeat humor and countercultural sensibilities abound in this playful riff on art investigations from self-described flâneur L. John Harris
BERKELEY, CALIF. — When food writer L. John Harris is sent to Paris to write about the croque monsieur sandwich, the last thing he expects is to embark on the journey of a lifetime. However, after finding a half-finished portrait left on the street, unsigned but dated January 12, 1935, he decides to uncover as much as he can about the painting. Blending memoir, art criticism, and history, Portrait In Red: A Paris Obsession is the most unconventional real-life detective novel you will ever read (on sale November 5, 2024).
Harris’ search for information on this rescued painting transforms from a quest to uncover the individual artist and the mysterious subject at the center of the half-finished portrait to a deeper exploration into what makes art, and any endeavor, valuable. This investigation takes him from art appraisers to psychics, string theorists to tourists, Russian painters to friendly neighbors. Along the way, he encounters a host of eclectic characters, each offering a unique perspective on the painting and its enigmatic past. He hosts private viewings, guerrilla poster campaigns, and digital art competitions. With a sense of adventure, curiosity, and care, we witness someone’s trash turn into another’s cherished treasure as the search for art becomes its own art project.
Portrait In Red: A Paris Obsession is not just a story about a painting; it’s a celebration of creativity, perseverance, and the pursuit of meaning and beauty in the world full of abandoned talent.
Advance Praise for Portrait in Red
“What a fascinating odyssey L. John Harris recounts, a detective story that is deeply affecting in its humanity, credible in its research. The discarded painting that he picks up one day in Paris leads him on an irresistible quest for answers: Who created this compellingly frank image? Who is the girl portrayed? Who put the picture out with the trash? Here, fully embodied, is the passionate curiosity that drives all human seekers.”
—Lynne D. Ambrosini, Deputy Director and Chief Curator Emerita, Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati
“A lovely voice and a sweet, involving tale.”
—Lawrence Weschler, author of Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder
“Local color, endearing ruminations, and Harris’ obsessive love for the City of Light shine through in these pages. C’est formidable!”
—David Downie, author of A Taste of Paris
“A gem of a book—a journey of discovery that reveals much about art’s power to seduce us, and even more about the author’s passion for it.”
—Terrance Gelenter, host of Your American Friend in Paris
“Portrait in Red is a rich global tapestry that is inviting, inventive, and lively.”
—W. Scott Haine, author of The History of France
“An amusing and authentic story of a beautiful and mysterious painting.”
—Serge Sorokko, Serge Sorokko Gallery, San Francisco
“In Portrait in Red, L. John Harris takes on the role of a Paris flâneur who comments on all he sees, hears, feels, and tastes. Harris’s expert eye and palette tease out the nuances of life on the streets of the French capital.”
—Zack Rogow, coauthor of Colette Uncensored
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John Harris, born in Los Angeles, studied art and literature at UC Berkeley in the 1960s. Seduced by Berkeley’s food revolution in the 1970s, Harris worked at several iconic shops and restaurants and wrote The Book of Garlic (1974). He launched his cookbook company, Aris Books, in 1980 and his “Foodoodles” cartoon byline in Bay Area magazines led to a series of illustrated memoirs: Foodoodles (2010), Café French (2019) and My Little Plague Journal (2022). Mr. Harris coproduced with PBS in 2001 the film Los Romeros: The Royal Family of the Guitar and serves as the curator of the Harris Guitar Collection at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Harris’s next book is a history of Berkeley’s “gourmet ghetto,” to be published by Heyday.
Debuts November 2024 — The Laws Field Guide to Sierra Birds (Updated Edition)
Beloved Naturalist and Illustrator John Muir Laws Debuts an Updated Edition of His Classic Birds Guide
The Laws Field Guide to Sierra Birds features over 200 species with full-color illustrations to help hikers, birders, and nature enthusiasts identify the winged creatures of the Sierras.
BERKELEY, CALIF. — On the 20th anniversary of its original publication, Heyday proudly debuts an updated edition of John Muir Laws’ classic guide to the birds of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Born out of a partnership with the California Academy of Sciences, The Laws Field Guide to Sierra Birds (October 2024), serves as a quintessential resource for both experienced bird watchers and budding ornithologists, and after two decades in print and over 40,000 copies sold, has become an indispensable resource.
Featuring a unique color-coded taxonomy, in this conveniently portable guide, Laws walks readers through the rainbow of montane avifauna, from red to orange to yellow to green to blue birds, in addition to separate sections on waterfowl and raptors. This updated edition features all new illustrations from the celebrated nature journaler, whose bestselling field and drawing guides combine art and science to foster curiosity, community, and nature connection.
As president and co-founder of the Wild Wonder Foundation—a nonprofit dedicated to encouraging nature connection and conservation—Laws’ goal in all his work is to nurture and celebrate attention to the wonder and beauty in our natural world as an entry point to stewardship, conservation, and care. With The Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Birds, he invites readers to turn their eyes to the skies.
“My start in nature journaling and drawing came through workshops with John Muir Laws,” writes Amy Tan, author of The Backyard Bird Chronicles. “I not only learned to draw, I discovered I could live more deeply in the moment, with curiosity, awe, and gratitude. It was restorative in a time of turmoil.”
“My working definition of love is sustained, compassionate attention,” says John Muir Laws. “When you pay attention to another, it changes your relationship with them, and it also changes you. That attention is also what forms and sustains our relationship with the natural world. Your attention is one of the greatest gifts that you can give to the world. It is a celebration. It is a song of connection. It is a prayer to the wonder of what is around us.”
With his updated field guide to Sierra birds, Laws invites all readers to share in the joy of attuning to nature, to discover what the birds are doing, and to use this experience to open up to the beauty and diversity of the Sierra.
Reader Praise for Sierra Birds
“This lightweight book is easy to use, the illustrations are beautiful and easy to compare with the sightings, and it is easy to carry. Terrific reference to bring birds in the field into the heart and carry close in memory.”
—Bailey M.
“I’m jealous of the friend I’m gifting this to, and I’ll probably be getting myself a copy as well. I love how easy this is to use for identification! A must for anyone living in the Sierras.”
—Mary
“Another beautifully illustrated and easy to use field guide of Sierran birds. And if you ever get a chance to see John Muir Laws give a presentation, do so!”
—Glen W.
“This is a well prepared compact reference. Nature lovers can find excellent identification pictures and descriptive narrative to aid in enjoying our feathered friends.”
—Anonymous
“Finally a good bird book for Sierra hikers! This book is very easy to use because the birds can easily be found simply by looking at the color of what you’re seeing. It’s excellent for kids and advanced birders alike.”
—J. Haskel
“Everyone with a plan to hike the Sierras, or owns a home there should have one.”
—Sue L.
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Kalie Caetano
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John Muir Laws is a naturalist, educator, and artist with degrees in conservation and resource studies, wildlife biology, and scientific illustration. His books include The Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada, The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds, The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling, and (with Emilie Lygren), and How to Teach Nature Journaling, all published by Heyday. He is cofounder of the Wild Wonder Foundation (wildwonder.org), an organization encouraging nature connection through art and science. Visit his website at johnmuirlaws.com.
Debuts September 2024 — California Against the Sea (paperback)
Pulitzer Finalist’s Prescient Exploration of Sea Level Rise Hailed as A Critical Guide to the Future
In her celebrated and awards-winning book, Los Angeles Times environmental reporter Rosanna Xia reveals what we stand to lose along our vanishing shorelines—unless we can imagine a more climate-wise path forward.
PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award Winner
A 2024 Great Read from Great Places
Selected by the Library of Congress and the California Center for the Book
A 2024 California Book Award Winner
Selected by the Commonwealth Club of California, Californiana Category
A 2024 Golden Poppy Award Winner
Voted best nonfiction book of the year by the California Independent Booksellers Alliances (CALIBA)
2024 Energy Writer of the Year
Awards by the American Energy Society
A 2024 Nautilus Silver Medal Winner
Restorative Earth Practices Category
A Best Book of 2023, Architect’s Newspaper • A Favorite Book of 2023, San Francisco Chronicle • A 2025 California Book Club pick by Alta Journal
BERKELEY, CALIF. — Wherever land meets sea, heating oceans swell into higher-than-high tides and city-leveling storms. Venice sinks, Louisiana shrinks, Indoneisans flee their seaside capital, and North Carolina’s beaches are disappearing like a time lapse with no end. For the last hundred years, California’s 1,200-mile Pacific coastline had enjoyed relative calm, but shifting tides exacerbated by climate change are bringing this serene century to a screeching close. In California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline, now releasing in paperback (September 24, 2024) and audiobook, Pulitzer finalist Rosanna Xia dives deep into the stakes, stopgaps, and potential paths forward for the 27 million people who call this coastline home.
By century’s end, sea level rise could threaten to push the Pacific shore inland by a measure of multiple football fields, an anticipated surge that could imperil tens to hundreds of billions of dollars of human settlement to say nothing of the risk posed to human and non-human life. Xia, a veteran environmental reporter for the LA Times, voyages across the West Coast to pull the curtain back on the trepidations of scientists, the tenacity of activists, and the battles intensifying in more than 20 coastal communities dotting the shoreline as they grapple with rising waters. The challenge, Xia says, is How do we get more people to care?
Through graceful in-depth reporting Xia explores how vested interests have trumped science, how low-income communities bare the brunt of environmental catastrophe (and are poised to do so again), how an attitude of human supremacy has hobbled our imaginations to envision what the coast could be, and how we may yet forestall impending devastation if we can embrace our collective capacity for change—in time.
“Few people are more qualified to explain and analyze this landscape,” writes Science. “[Xia] breathes exquisite detail and dialogue into a rich narrative held up by years of beat reporting.”
Declared a 2024 Great Read from Great Places by the Library of Congress, and winner of the PEN E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, the California Book Award, the Nautilus Book Award, and the Golden Poppy (voted on by more than 230 independent booksellers), California Against the Sea is a triumph of ecoreportage, an indispensable future-forward book that has earned a place among the pantheon of watershed environmental treatises.
“Coastal California offers a case study in what happens when some try to control a landscape and others move with it, a story deftly unfurled by Rosanna Xia in California Against the Sea,” writes the jury of the PEN E.O. Wilson prize in their citation of the book. “While largely focused on coastal erosion, California Against the Sea stokes a universal sense of urgency,” says Wesley Minter of Third Place Books (Seattle, WA). “This is a notable debut that deftly balances the hard realities of the present with a sense of pragmatic hope for the future.”
Advance Praise for California Against the Sea
“Just as the coast defines the liminal world between land and sea, so too does Rosanna Xia’s remarkable book exist in the overlap between development and erosion, between geological forces and human desire, between our ambitious past and our tenuous future. It’s viscerally urgent, thoroughly reported, and compellingly written—a must-read for our uncertain times.”
—ED YONG, author of An Immense World
“This book should be required reading for Californians—and all Americans. Exquisite and wrenching, Rosanna Xia has written an essential book that shows us what we stand to lose.”
—LIZZIE JOHNSON, author of Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire
“Fans of Xia’s work for the L.A. Times will recognize her virtuosic blend of propulsive boots-on-the-ground storytelling, explanatory reporting, and genuine curiosity and love for place. A profound and timely exploration of humanity’s various and shifting relationships to coastlines and the forces that shape them by one of the great environmental reporters working today.”
—LISA WELLS, author of Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World
“Xia’s prophetic and perceptive book reveals a California coastline denied by centuries of settlers more intent on dreaming than facing the unsteady reality of the living ocean’s edge. California Against the Sea is the invitation we need today to enter a future where we learn to work with nature instead of against it. Xia’s message should be heeded everywhere ocean meets land.”
—MEERA SUBRAMANIAN, author of A River Runs Again: India’s Natural World in Crisis, from the Barren Cliffs of Rajasthan to the Farmlands of Karnataka
“In the midst of the climate crisis, can the people of California treat the rising Pacific Ocean as something other than an adversary? In California Against the Sea, Rosanna Xia argues persuasively that such a transformation is not only possible but already underway, inspired by lessons from deep history and the recent past. Rigorously reported and beautifully written, this book is a crucial guide to the future.”
—MICHELLE NIJHUIS, author of Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction
“Xia’s California Against the Sea deftly charts the past, present and future of California’s changing coastlines in order to retrieve hope for more sustainable futures from headlines of environmental loss. This lucid account shows that sea level rise is less an intractable problem than an urgent invitation to rethink our relationships with oceans and with one another. A beautiful, revelatory and prescient book.”
—LUCAS BESSIRE, author of Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains
”Rosanna Xia’s ability to move effortlessly between the journalist’s voice, the historian’s voice, and even the poet’s voice makes her story of our climate precarity more than an account of evidence and circumstance. The book is rife with humanity, nuanced and powerful because of it.”
—OBI KAUFMANN, author of The Coasts of California
Post-Publication Praise for California Against the Sea
“What happens if, as the world warms and the Pacific Ocean rises, California’s coast and beaches drown? That’s the crisis that Los Angeles Times environmental reporter Rosanna Xia investigates in her thoughtful, balanced, deeply researched and reported California Against the Sea.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“When do seawalls make sense? And when is it better to give in to the tides? In California Against the Sea, Xia writes about the difficult realities of trying to incorporate fairness into our tally of costs and benefits.”
—The New Yorker
“An unsparing look at California’s contentious battle to cope with a changing climate.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Few people are more qualified to explain and analyze this landscape. Xia’s reporting on this topic earned her a spot as a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting in 2020. In this, her first nonfiction book, she breathes exquisite detail and dialogue into a rich narrative held up by years of beat reporting.”
—Science
“Xia is a sympathetic and careful observer, detailing the politics and (sometimes questionable) ethics of American settlement along the California coast, the natural and human-driven processes propelling change, and how people are confronting a new reality where the high tides of today will become the low tides of tomorrow. Tension — with time, with ourselves — is at the heart of California Against the Sea, the winner of the 2024 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, a book of beauty, resilience, empathy, and rebirth.”
—Jury Citation, PEN E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award
“A beautifully written, highly relevant book about not just our relationship with and how we think about the natural world, but also how we relate to each other.”
—Book Riot
“The stories of each community Xia highlights give you hope that climate adaptation is possible.”
—Powell’s Books
“Perhaps the most important takeaway from this important book is that we are all in this together. Seemingly at-odds terminology like ‘managed retreat’ and ‘seawalls’ needn’t be fundamentally at odds. Not if we acknowledge a shared set of facts and begin planning for a future California coast that will remain hospitable, not just for us, but for our children and our children’s children.”
—Pacifica Tribune
“A book that should be read by everyone who lives along California’s coastline, and everyone who cares about this jagged, unpredictable marvel of a landscape.”
—Santa Barbara Independent
“Xia makes a compelling case that the way California has treated its coastline for generations—as a desirable commodity to be parceled off and sold to the wealthy, or elsewhere, as a dumping ground for industrial infrastructure—was never sustainable to begin with, and this moment offers us an invitation to rethink our relationship with the ocean we cherish.”
—Berkeleyside
“Our coastline is shifting, far faster than it ever has before. Xia covers these complicated issues with a deft hand. I finished the book informed, enlightened, and even a little bit hopeful for the future.”
—Napa Valley Register
“This is a very important book, which will resonate for decades.”
—Sausalito Books by the Bay
Media Contact:
Kalie Caetano
Marketing & Publicity Director, Heyday
For review copies, feature interest, and interview and image requests, get in touch: publicity@heydaybooks.com.
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Rosanna Xia is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and an environmental reporter for the Los Angeles Times, where she specializes in stories about the coast and ocean. She directed and produced the award-winning feature documentary film, Out of Plain Sight, and her celebrated book, California Against the Sea, received the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, a gold medal from the California Book Awards, and a “Great Reads from Great Places” citation from the Library of Congress, among other honors. She has been praised for her investigative reporting and narrative storytelling, and her coverage of a toxic dumpsite in the deep ocean has been anthologized in the Best American Science and Nature Writing series.
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Debuts November 2024 — The Birds in the Oaks
A New Book on Oak-Allied Birds Celebrates Connections Between Tree Host and their Winged Tenants
In The Birds in the Oaks columnist Jack Gedney profiles over 15 bird species and their co-evolution with the oaks where they live, feed, and visit.
BERKELEY, CALIF. — Until you reach some 8,000 feet of elevation, nearly every woodland or forest in California includes oaks in at least a supporting capacity, and often as the dominant trees of an ecosystem. Wherever in the world they may be found, these iconic keystone species are host to a colorful cast of birds who roost, perch, and forage among their twisted limbs and furrowed bark, making them a veritable MVP for the ecologies where they live. Bird columnist Jack Gedney, explores the intricate connections between them and the pageant of feathered fliers that find succor among and beneath their branches in his charming new book The Birds in the Oaks: Secret Voices of the Western Woods (on sale October 15, 2024).
With this volume Gedney, the author of The Private Lives of Public Birds (Heyday, 2022), returns with an awe-inspiring portrait of the magnanimous oaks who welcome the dependence of an array of avian species, forming lines of connection that Gedney calls readers to witness and appreciate. Divided into four sections, The Birds in the Oaks profiles the nuthatches and woodpeckers who feed and roost in the oaks, the towhees and quail burrowing beneath their branches and creeping along their trunks, the chickadees and warblers who stop by for the occasional layover from the firs and pines, and the further-flung sojourners that can occasionally be glimpsed amidst their canopies. To know the oak woodland birds, Gedney argues, it is invaluable to know the trees around which their feeding, mating, and sheltering habits have evolved.
“In our human world of purchasable conveniences of invisible origin, it’s easy to slip into thinking that we operate apart, that we have no vital need for the rest of nature,” says Gedney, “It is much more difficult to make that error with birds, especially this troop of birds that together live upon the oaks, these trees like friendly giants, bearing kinglets on one arm and vireos on another, with creepers, woodpeckers, and nuthatches clinging to their chest and back.”
Through his insightful, lyrical observations of some 15 oak-allied bird species, Gedney reveals how the subtle and variable traits of these trees — from the deciduous oaks to the valley variety — invite the attentions and tenancies of different species. And he reveals, with wonder and details drawn from natural history, how these flora and avifauna have evolved ever more closely together over the course of millennia.
Media Contact:
Kalie Caetano
Marketing & Publicity Director, Heyday
For review copies, feature interest, and interview and image requests, get in touch: publicity@heydaybooks.com.
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Jack Gedney is a bird columnist who writes “On the Wing” for the Marin Independent Journal and co-owner of a wild bird feeding and nature shop in Novato, California. He is the author of a compact field guide to the trees of the San Francisco Bay Area and The Private Lives of Public Birds: Learning to Listen to the Birds Where We Live (Heyday, 2022). His most recent book is The Birds in the Oaks: Secret Voices of the Western Woods, illustrated by Angelina Gedney.
Angelina Gedney is an artist based in Davis, California.
Debuts November 2024 — Bay Area Wildlife
Quirky Wildlife Guide to the San Francisco Bay Area Invites Readers to Connect with and Conserve Local Species
This antidote to dry field guides from advocate Jeff Miller shares detailed portraits of over 100 native creatures with illustration from eco-philosopher Obi Kaufmann
BERKELEY, CALIF. — As habitat loss and climate breakdown endanger ever more animal species, conservationist Jeff Miller invites fellow Bay Area denizens to embrace their local fauna through his delightful new book Bay Area Wildlife: An Irreverent Guide (on sale November 12, 2024). Featuring over 100 native creatures, spanning mammalian, marine, avian, amphibian and invertebrate species, this informative primer is a treasure map for regional wildlife that enlists readers to join the ranks of the world’s wildlife defenders.
Miller, a decades-long advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, draws on his vast knowledge of the San Francisco Bay bioregion—an area spanning over 2 million acres of open space—to cast spotlights on the whereabouts and personalities of Northern California’s furred, feathered, and fork- tongued neighbors—from “screaming death parrots” (aka Peregrine falcons) to “bad-ass Looney Tunes velociraptors” (roadrunners). His colorful descriptions offer a compilation of each species’ natural history and fun facts—like that elephant seals have the loudest recorded burps (at 130 decibels) or that a group of owls is collectively known as “a parliament.” Each section also includes tips on when and where to find each animal alongside watercolor illustrations by Obi Kaufmann (author and artist of the bestselling The California Field Atlas). Notes on each animal’s conservation status round out each of Miller’s portraits.
“The San Francisco Bay Area has been identified as one of the nation’s six most important biodiversity hotspots, but facing numerous severe threats,” says Miller, “Our journey to enjoy, protect and steward Bay Area wildlife can start by educating ourselves and others about the ecology, habitats, and interrelatedness of local plants and animals.”
By celebrating the charms of local animals, Bay Area Wildlife gives readers a stake in this ecosystem’s future. Sections on lost species underscore the adverse impacts of the Anthropocene—an era characterized by Miller as the “unraveling of life on Earth.” Miller closes his guide with entry points into local conservation initiatives, warning of the impending “Age of Loneliness”—a human-caused extinction wave that robs our planet of its biodiversity—and implores readers to turn away from anthropocentrism toward connectivity and symbiosis.
Advance Praise for Bay Area Wildlife
“Breezy to read, bite-sized accounts of fascinating creatures, be they colossal or minute, obvious or clandestine, slimy or sinewy, and furred, feathered or finned, hold the reader’s attention. This lovingly irreverent perspective on this rich and diverse area will assuredly captivate, astonish, educate, and always entertain.”
—Keith Hansen, author of Birds of Point Reyes
“Jeff Miller, a leading advocate for wild nature in the region, writes without stuffiness. He deploys ageless archetypes then segues to the science.”
—Ken Brower, author of Wake of the Whale
“A fun and easy guide to get to know many of the fascinating and diverse fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals (and even nudibranchs) of the Bay Area. Combining playful descriptions with excellent natural history observations, this book belongs in every nature-lover’s library.”
—Laura Cunningham, author of A State of Change
“The Blazing Saddles of wildlife guides.”
—Jolene Griffith, Jeff’s mom
Media Contact:
Kalie Caetano
Marketing & Publicity Director, Heyday
For review copies, feature interest, and interview and image requests, get in touch: publicity@heydaybooks.com.
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Jeff Miller is the founder of the Alameda Creek Alliance and has served as executive director since 1997. Jeff has spent the last quarter century protecting Bay Area wildlife habitat with the Center for Biological Diversity, where he helps with media outreach, writing endangered species listing petitions, and works on biodiversity issues and endangered species protection throughout California.
Debuts October 2024 — Louder Than the Lies
Anti-Racist Educator Unpacks Asian American Racialization and Self-Determination in New Book
A series of ideas and frameworks sets out to dispel white supremacist stigmas and stereotypes affecting people of Asian descent.
BERKELEY, CALIF. — Second-generation Taiwanese American educator Ellie Yang Camp delves into the complexity and nuances of what it means to be racialized as Asian in the U.S. in her debut book Louder Than the Lies: Asian American Identity, Solidarity, and Self-Love (on sale October 22, 2024). Intended as a guide for Asian Americans seeking clarity and validation, Camp draws on personal experiences, peer insights, historical case studies, and the racial justice struggles of other people of color to examine the inner workings of white supremacy and map an escape route from its system.
“Racial categories are thrust on us as a tool to govern us, not as expressions of how we see ourselves,” writes Camp, “Without a map, sometimes the safest thing to do is go with the flow of where everyone else is moving. And that flow tells us that if we become the whitest version of ourselves, fit into the ideal of the quiet, hardworking model minority, and distance ourselves from Blackness, we will be safe. To have the boldness to define ourselves is an act of radical liberation.”
Divided into three parts, Louder Than the Lies explores white supremacy through three lenses — The System, Living in the System, and Dismantling the System. Across the chapters Camp reveals how the nested ideologies of Eurocentric thinking, settler colonialism, capitalism, and empire have fomented and sustained racism. She explores, among other topics, the roots and impacts of anti-immigrant fervor and the perception of Asian Americans as “perpetual foreigners”; the curricular erasure of Asian American history and achievement; yellowface and whitesplaining; anti-Blackness within Asian American communities; and the past and present scourges of anti-Asian violence and hate crimes in the United States.
Throughout, readers are encouraged to press into and through moments of discomfort and to draw inspiration through self-reflection and coalition-building solidarity movements. By unlearning prevailing dogmas and cultivating introspection and multiracial allyships, Camp charts a path out of the “dumpster fire” of racist indoctrination and toward self-love and the collaborative, cross-racial pursuit of justice.
Advance Praise for Louder Than the Lies
“Louder Than the Lies is an essential read for understanding Asian American identity. It is a testament to Ellie’s commitment to our community.”
—Linda Yoon and Soo Jin Lee, coauthors of Where I Belong
“There is a drastic and urgent need for more Asian American voices, and especially Asian American women’s voices. Ellie has been a passionate leader in this space, and she has been instrumental in my own understanding of Asian American history.”
—Jeremy Lin, NBA Champion
“It’s vital to have a book like this out in the world. Ellie provides invaluable insights and resources to help our community better understand where anti-Asian hate comes from, how it impacts how we see ourselves, and how we can work together to overcome it.”
—Dion Lim, Emmy Award–winning news anchor and author of Amplify! My Fight for Asian America
“This book offers much-needed hope and encouragement to engage in collective possibilities for a more just future.”
—OiYan A. Poon, author of Asian American Is Not a Color
“This is and will be a necessary and useful tool for generations to come.”
—Jenny T. Wang, author of Permission to Come Home
Media Contact:
Kalie Caetano
Marketing & Publicity Director, Heyday
For review copies, feature interest, and interview and image requests, get in touch: publicity@heydaybooks.com.
Keep up with Heyday on social:
Ellie Yang Camp is an artist and educator from the San Francisco Bay Area. The proud daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, she has been a high-school history teacher, a full-time parent, a calligrapher, an anti-racist educator, and now an author. She has a bachelor’s degree in political science from UC Berkeley and a master’s degree in education from Stanford.
Debuts October 2024 — Tell Me Something, Tell Me Anything, Even If It's a Lie
Political and Literary Omnivore Steve Wasserman Releases a New Memoir-in-Essays
This exhilarating journey through the world of books penned by a “treasure of American letters” provokes and delights.
BERKELEY, CALIF. — During his decades-long career in publishing, Steve Wasserman has worn nearly every possible hat in the industry—editor, agent, reviewer, literary festival co-founder, publisher—serving as a midwife to the art and ideas of some of the most influential cultural juggernauts of recent decades, from Linda Ronstadt to the late Christopher Hitchens. This fall, this literary tastemaker dons his author’s cap for the first time in book form to publish an engrossing new memoir-in-essays, Tell Me Something, Tell Me Anything, Even If It’s a Lie (on sale October 8, 2024).
Lauded by Viet Thanh Nguyen, Héctor Tobar, Joyce Carol Oates, Vivian Gornick, and Hilton Als (to name just a few), this book encompasses Wasserman’s superbly turned hot takes, ranging from the frontlines of progressive politics to the higher gossip of the literati. The intellectual terrain within his orbit is as capacious as its geography—with deep-dive spannings from the readerly culture of Los Angeles to the art of the Russian avant-garde and featuring cameos from a constellation of extraordinary cultural figures—Susan Sontag, Orson Welles, Barbra Streisand, and Gore Vidal among them.
With his trademark wit, Wasserman reflects on the vitality of activism, journalism, and the world of books in this perceptive book. As a man of letters presiding over the twilight of the Age of Print, he interrogates the hegemony of Amazon, the collapse of newspapers, and the consequences of both for our civic discourse. Part archive, part crystal ball, these essays (originally published in the Nation, the American Conservative, the New Republic, the Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere) afford a view into a life lived on the crest of major cultural turning points for both medium and message. Throughout the tumult—whether of industry or politics—Wasserman’s stalwart conviction of the transformative potential of the written word never wavers, a devotion evident on every page.
“Getting to be an author’s first critic, helping to craft and hone arguments,” writes Wasserman, “to find ways to cut through the noise of the culture and get attention for deserving work, to advance public understanding and deepen civic conversation—all this has been my life’s passion.”
Advance Praise for Tell Me Something, Tell Me Anything, Even If It's a Lie
“Steve Wasserman is so open to experience—so open and articulate about history, and the new—that to not follow his quicksilver intelligence and bountiful heart in these wonderful pages would be criminal. Read, reflect, and rejoice in the bounty. What a gift.”
—HILTON ALS
“If ever a man was in love with The Movement—that is, the peace and liberationist movements of the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s—that man is Steve Wasserman. This collection of essays, in all its intelligent exuberance, pays full respect to that honorable devotion.”
—VIVIAN GORNICK
“It’s such a pleasure to see the cream of Steve Wasserman’s writings now collected. He is, as he says of his late friend Susan Sontag, an ‘omnivore’—about politics, about literature, and about the way the rebellious currents he first encountered in 1960s Berkeley have continued to ripple through American life. The resulting volume is a feast.”
—ADAM HOCHSCHILD
“Steve Wasserman’s wit and passions are on full display in this collection of fine essays, crammed full of insights and anecdotes from several (apparently very fun) decades in the literary world. A troublemaker of the good kind since his youth, Wasserman continues to inspire with his vigorous dedication to the life of the mind, exhibited with clarity and grace in this book.”
—VIET THANH NGUYEN
“An intensely personal, engaging, and illuminating memoir in the form of essays published over fifty years, Tell Me Something, Tell Me Anything, Even If It’s a Lie is a richly detailed account of the intellectual life of an individual upon whom, to paraphrase Henry James, ‘nothing has been lost.’ Highly recommended.”
—JOYCE CAROL OATES
“A passionate witness of the upheavals of the past five decades that guided America to places unimagined before, Steve Wasserman’s clear and sober reflections remind us how much in this history there is to discover and to honor.”
—DARRYL PINCKNEY
“With its deeply human portraits and incisive criticism, Tell Me Something, Tell Me Anything, Even If It’s a Lie is a record of a personal and intellectual journey like few others. Steve Wasserman is a treasure of American letters and his book is a testament, above all, to a literary life lived to the fullest.”
—HÉCTOR TOBAR
Media Contact:
Kalie Caetano
Marketing & Publicity Director, Heyday
For review copies, feature interest, and interview and image requests, get in touch: publicity@heydaybooks.com.
Keep up with Heyday on social:
Steve Wasserman is publisher of Heyday. A 1974 graduate of UC Berkeley, he holds a degree in criminology. His past positions include being deputy editor of the op-ed page and opinion section of the Los Angeles Times; editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review; editorial director of New Republic Books; publisher and editorial director of Hill and Wang at Farrar, Straus & Giroux and of the Noonday Press; editorial director of Times Books at Random House; and editor at large for Yale University Press. A former partner of the literacy agency Kneerim & Williams, he represented many authors, including Christopher Hitchens, Linda Ronstadt, Robert Scheer, and David Thomson. He lives in Berkeley, California.
