Jordan Thomas

In "When It All Burns," Jordan Thomas offers an account of life on the frontlines of the climate crisis, focusing on the rise of megafires and the wildland firefighters battling them. His book follows a brutal six-month fire season with the Los Padres Hotshots, an elite crew tasked with confronting fires that are often too extreme to contain. With visceral detail, Thomas explores the sociocultural forces driving the intensifying wildfire crisis, revealing how the most destructive impacts of climate change are rooted in histories of inequality and exploitation, leaving certain people and places more vulnerable to its effects.

In this talk, Thomas dissects the process of narrating climate change, examining the myriad considerations writers face when transforming environmental data into human stories. When a crisis is ubiquitous yet unevenly distributed, how can we untangle its diverse threads honestly and ethically, without erasing people, places, species, and histories? What does it mean to approach climate change as both a physical reality and a socially constructed narrative? This talk will explore these questions and more, while offering an open-ended roadmap for narrating climate change through character-driven stories.