Where Literature Meets Science
A conversation with novelist Susan M. Gaines and poet Maya Khosla, moderated by Ray Holley.
This is a free, outdoor event in our amphitheater. Seating will be in the shade by 4pm, bring your own seat cushion or stadium chair. Refreshments, wine, beer, and signed, personalized books will be for sale. This event is brought to you by OCA’s Literary Committee.
ABOUT THE EVENT:
Susan M. Gaines’s recent novel Accidentals weaves together bird and wetlands biology, a history of South American political repression, and a compelling family saga. Ecologist Maya Khosla’s poetry is informed by years of fieldwork in untouched forests that support high biodiversity after wildfire. In this two-genre conversation, they exemplify how poetry and fiction engage with science and natural history and explore their mutual themes of biodiversity and climate change, accidentals and migrants, and the nexus between political and environmental history. Join them with your own questions and comments!
Susan M. Gaines’s books include the novels Accidentals and Carbon Dreams, and the science book Echoes of Life. Her stories and essays have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies and been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes. She is the initiator of the international Fiction Meets Science program and the recipient of a Suffrage Science Award and of an Art in Science Fellowship at the Hanse Institute for Advanced Study. (Learn more about Susan’s work here). Gaines has spent much of her adult life abroad, but she always returns to Sonoma County, where she lived for over a decade.
“Gorgeous, smart, and surprising, Gaines’ family saga takes us into the large world of nations and politics, but also the microscopic world of mud and microbes. Tender and powerful. Also with birds!” – Karen Joy Fowler
Maya Khosla is a wildlife biologist and writer. She is currently working on a film about being fire-wise. Her books include All the Fires of Wind and Light, poetry from Sixteen Rivers Press (2020 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award), Keel Bone, poetry from Bear Star Press (Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize), and Web of Water: Life in Redwood Creek (Golden Gate Parks Conservancy). Sonoma County Conservation Council (SCCC) selected Maya as one of the 2020 Environmentalists of the Year. She served as the Poet Laureate of Sonoma County (2018-2020), organizing a series of filmed readings to bring Sonoma’s communities together after the 2017 fires. Her poems have been featured in documentary films and in many journals.
Ray Holley is a Sonoma County native. He wrote for, edited and managed weekly newspapers for two decades and now works as the Communications Manager for the Sonoma County Library.