Obi Kaufmann and Rosanna Xia in conversation, presented by Litquake & Heyday.

The Lost Church, 988 Columbus Ave, San Francisco.

In this forward-looking panel, an artist and a journalist walk into a bar to share their insights about our state’s ecological future, including its greatest imminent threats and its best possibilities for regeneration. Together, these thinkers will extrapolate what this future may look like—and what it could look like were we to dispel our apathy and embrace our collective ability for change. Featuring artist-adventurer Obi Kaufmann (The Deserts of California) and star reporter Rosanna Xia (California Against the Sea), moderated by KQED’s Ezra David Romero. Doors at 7:30, show at 8pm. $10 adv / door

Obi Kaufmann is the illustrator and author of The California Field Atlas (2017, #1 San Francisco Chronicle bestseller), The State of Water (2019), The Forests of California (2020), The Coasts of California (2022), and The Deserts of California (October 2023). He is the 2023 Artist-in-Residence at the Whiskeytown National Recreation Area. 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.

Rosanna Xia is an environmental reporter for the Los Angeles Times, where she specializes in stories about the coast and ocean. She was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2020 for explanatory reporting on sea level rise, which inspired the work that culminated in California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline (September 2023). Her writing has been anthologized in the Best American Science and Nature Writing series. Follow her work and reporting @RosannaXia. She lives in Los Angeles, California.

Ezra David Romero (moderator) is a climate reporter for KQED News. He covers the absence and excess of water in the Bay Area—think sea level rise, flooding and drought. For nearly a decade he’s covered how warming temperatures are altering the lives of Californians. He’s reported on farmers worried their pistachio trees aren’t getting enough sleep, families desperate for water, scientists studying dying giant sequoias, and alongside firefighters containing wildfires. His work has appeared on local stations across California and nationally on public radio shows like Morning Edition, Here and Now, All Things Considered, and Science Friday.

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