
Join poet-painter Obi Kaufmann as he discusses his beautiful new book, The Coasts of California.
Featuring over 400 of the author’s signature watercolors and maps, Kaufmann invites readers on an odyssey from the rocky coast of Crescent City to the mosaic of the Channel Islands. In this ecological epic, Kaufmann explores where land meets ocean— where most of the human population of the state lives and where its natural world is most threatened—painting a vision for a more sustainable future along the way.
The discussion will be followed by a Q&A with the audience and a book signing.
Register HereGrowing up in the East Bay as the son of an astrophysicist and a psychologist, Obi Kaufmann spent most of high school practicing calculus and breaking away on weekends to scramble around Mount Diablo and map its creeks, oak forests, and sage mazes. Into adulthood, he would regularly journey into the mountains, spending more summer nights without a roof than with one. He is the author of The California Field Atlas (2017, #1 San Francisco Chronicle Best Seller), The State of Water: Understanding California’s Most Precious Natural Resource (2019), and The Forests of California: A California Field Atlas (2020), all published by Heyday. When he is not backpacking, you can find the painter-poet at home in the East Bay, posting trail paintings at his handle @coyotethunder on Instagram. His website is coyoteandthunder.com.