Venue
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
1151 Oxford Rd.
San Marino, CA 91108
Life in the Pyrocene: The West in the Time of Climate Change
Saturday, May 03, 2025 at 3:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Cost: Free
Sponsor: The PEN America World Voices Festival
For more information call: 626-405-3457
Or click here: https://worldvoices.pen.org/event/25-west-climate-change/
The PEN World Voices Festival returns to Los Angeles from April 30 to May 3, 2025, for four dynamic days celebrating the transformative power of literature and culture across the city. On one of these days, three distinguished writers—each acclaimed for their work centered on the American West—gather to explore themes of ecological devastation, adaptation, and resilience through the lens of recent wildfires.
Cultural historian D.J. Waldie, best known for Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir, will read from his forthcoming work Elements of Los Angeles: Essays on Earth, Water, Air, and Fire. Poet and artist Daniela Naomi Molnar, whose writing engages “ecology, grief, and the illusion of closure,” reflects on her 2020 escape from her Portland home as it stood on the edge of a wildfire. Rubén Martínez, author of Desert America: Boom and Bust in the New Old West and one of the leading chroniclers of migration and the West’s contradictions, examines the region’s increasingly volatile extremes.
Together, these three voices will share readings and reflections on the growing intensity of fire seasons and the role of art in confronting ecological crisis.
This program is co-presented with The Huntington. Registered guests will receive access to The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens beginning at 2 PM PT, one hour prior to the event.
Tickets are available through The Huntington website >> For any questions or concerns, please contact Joy Yamahata at jharding@huntington.org or 626-405-3457.