In this episode, authors Kerri Schlottman and Caroline Tracey talk about salt lakes, ecological collapse, empathy, environmental justice, and storytelling.

Caroline Tracey’s debut, Salt Lakes: An Unnatural History, published by W.W. Norton in March 2026, has received extraordinary praise, including a review in The New York Times Book Review noting its “visceral clarity and geologic intimacy.” Her environmental writing for The New Yorker, Guernica, and High Country News makes her a leading literary voice grappling with the transformations of the American Southwest.

Kerri Schlottman’s novel, Daytime Moon, published by Unnamed Press in May 2026, weaves themes of hydrofeminism, empathy, and collapse into a story about how bodies and communities absorb environmental and emotional depletion, and is set at the Salton Sea, a picturesque site of ecological collapse.