Book-in-Progress: Salt Lakes
Forthcoming from W.W. Norton
When I was twenty-four, I worked as a cowboy in New Mexico. After rainstorms, the brown-red earth turned white in some places, especially at the edges of the creek that ran through the ranch. I didn’t understand where it came from. I only knew that as a queer woman searching for home in a world fast being remade by climate change, I kept finding my way to salt.
Salt Lakes follows me through a decade of documenting efforts to save the world’s salt lakes — often-ignored ecosystems that are crucial to the world’s water cycle, migratory bird populations, and human health — while simultaneously unraveling the mystery of my own attachment to the lakes. The books takes readers from Eastern California to the desert of Kazakhstan, from Mexico City to the pampas of Argentina. As it charts a history of the creative, novel conservation tactics developed for these “freakish ecosystems,” the book simultaneously seeks in the lakes a guide for finding beauty and anchorage in a fast-changing world.
Related articles:
Lake Abert: "On a Razor's Edge": migratory birds rely on this salt lake – but it’s dying
The Salton Sea: In Search of Answers at the Salton Sea
Mexicali Valley/Colorado River Delta/Laguna Salada: A Cartography of Loss in the Borderlands
Mexico Basin: A River Passes By Here
Great Salt Lake: LDS environmentalists want their institution to address the Great Salt Lake’s collapse
Lake Mackay: The Ephemeral Forever
Forthcoming from W.W. Norton
When I was twenty-four, I worked as a cowboy in New Mexico. After rainstorms, the brown-red earth turned white in some places, especially at the edges of the creek that ran through the ranch. I didn’t understand where it came from. I only knew that as a queer woman searching for home in a world fast being remade by climate change, I kept finding my way to salt.
Salt Lakes follows me through a decade of documenting efforts to save the world’s salt lakes — often-ignored ecosystems that are crucial to the world’s water cycle, migratory bird populations, and human health — while simultaneously unraveling the mystery of my own attachment to the lakes. The books takes readers from Eastern California to the desert of Kazakhstan, from Mexico City to the pampas of Argentina. As it charts a history of the creative, novel conservation tactics developed for these “freakish ecosystems,” the book simultaneously seeks in the lakes a guide for finding beauty and anchorage in a fast-changing world.
Related articles:
Lake Abert: "On a Razor's Edge": migratory birds rely on this salt lake – but it’s dying
The Salton Sea: In Search of Answers at the Salton Sea
Mexicali Valley/Colorado River Delta/Laguna Salada: A Cartography of Loss in the Borderlands
Mexico Basin: A River Passes By Here
Great Salt Lake: LDS environmentalists want their institution to address the Great Salt Lake’s collapse
Lake Mackay: The Ephemeral Forever
Caroline Eaton Tracey writes about the environment, migration, and the arts in the US Southwest, Mexico, and their borderlands. She speaks and works in English, Spanish, and Russian. Her first book, SALT LAKES, will be published by W.W. Norton.
Caroline’s reporting appears in the New Yorker, n+1, New York Review of Books, High Country News, and elsewhere, as well as in Spanish in Mexico’s Nexos.
In 2022 she was awarded the Waterston Prize for Desert Writing and in 2023 she received Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Fellowship in Journalism and Human and Civil Rights and a Silvers Foundation Work-in-Progress grant. In 2024, she received an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.
Caroline holds a PhD in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley. She lives with her wife, Mexican architect and sculptor Mariana GJP, between Tucson, Arizona and Mexico City.
She is represented by Bridget Matzie of Aevitas Creative Management.
Caroline’s reporting appears in the New Yorker, n+1, New York Review of Books, High Country News, and elsewhere, as well as in Spanish in Mexico’s Nexos.
In 2022 she was awarded the Waterston Prize for Desert Writing and in 2023 she received Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Fellowship in Journalism and Human and Civil Rights and a Silvers Foundation Work-in-Progress grant. In 2024, she received an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.
Caroline holds a PhD in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley. She lives with her wife, Mexican architect and sculptor Mariana GJP, between Tucson, Arizona and Mexico City.
She is represented by Bridget Matzie of Aevitas Creative Management.
Caroline Eaton Tracey escribe sobre el medioambiente, la migración, el arte y la literatura en México, el Suroeste de Estados Unidos y su frontera. Habla ingles, español y ruso. Su primer libro, SALT LAKES, será publicado bajo el sello de la editorial W.W. Norton.
Sus artículos aparecen en The New Yorker, n+1, New York Review of Books y High Country News entre otros lugares. En español escribe frecuentemente para la revista Nexos.
En 2022 ganó el Premio Waterston por Escritura del Desierto y en 2023 recibió la beca Ira A. Lipman de periodismo de derechos humanos y civiles de Columbia University y una beca de la Fundación Silvers. En 2024, recibió una beca para escritura sobre el arte de la fundación Andy Warhol.
Caroline es Doctora en Geografía de la Universidad de California–Berkeley. Vive con su esposa, la arquitecta y escultora mexicana Mariana GJP, entre Tucson, Arizona y la Ciudad de México.
La representa Bridget Matzie de la agencia literaria Aevitas Creative Management.
Sus artículos aparecen en The New Yorker, n+1, New York Review of Books y High Country News entre otros lugares. En español escribe frecuentemente para la revista Nexos.
En 2022 ganó el Premio Waterston por Escritura del Desierto y en 2023 recibió la beca Ira A. Lipman de periodismo de derechos humanos y civiles de Columbia University y una beca de la Fundación Silvers. En 2024, recibió una beca para escritura sobre el arte de la fundación Andy Warhol.
Caroline es Doctora en Geografía de la Universidad de California–Berkeley. Vive con su esposa, la arquitecta y escultora mexicana Mariana GJP, entre Tucson, Arizona y la Ciudad de México.
La representa Bridget Matzie de la agencia literaria Aevitas Creative Management.