Wed Jan 15, 02025, 12:00AM UTC
Julia Sklar and Kyle Paoletta
American Oasis : Finding the Future in the Cities of the Southwest
Harvard Book Store and the Long Now Boston Foundation welcome Kyle Paoletta—local author whose reporting and criticism has appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s, and New York Magazine—for a discussion on his new book American Oasis : Finding the Future in the Cities of the Southwest. He will be joined in conversation by Julia Sklar—story editor for Sierra Magazine.
Julia Sklar is an award-winning science journalist, as well as an editor, educator, and public speaker. She is currently the story editor for Sierra Magazine, where she commissions and edits freelancers reporting on climate science, environmental justice, and conservation for their quarterly print magazine and website. Six years prior, she was an independent journalist reporting on science, health, food, and technology for National Geographic, the Boston Globe, Curbed, Lenny Letter, Undark Magazine, and others. In addition to pursuing her own reporting and editing, she has also taught science journalism at the Johns Hopkins graduate program in science writing, and an MIT summer program for rising high school seniors.
Julia Sklar
Kyle Paoletta’s reporting and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s, New York Magazine, The Nation, The New Republic, n+1, The Believer, The Columbia Journalism Review, The Baffler, High Country News, and Boston. Kyle holds an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University and previously worked at GQ and New York Magazine. He is a native of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Kyle Paoletta
Speakers
Long Now Boston and the Harvard Bookstore welcomed journalist Kyle Paoletta for a packed reading and discussion of his new book, "American Oasis: Finding the Future in the Cities of the American Southwest" (which was officially released by Pantheon that same day). Paoletta grew up in Albuquerque, but only recognized the strangeness of the region after he left it for other parts of the country. Indeed, observing life in five scorched metropolises gave him myriad insights into how humans adapted and continue to adapt to privations such as extreme heat, depleted soil, and paucity of water. In conversation with his friend and editor at Sierra Magazine Julia Sklar, ultimately Paoletta framed his hope for a viable human future around Las Vegas’s exemplary municipal husbanding of water, which has, surprisingly, enabled the population to burgeon without increasing water usage. He also discussed the multicultural nature of the Southwest, and how coexisting in a dense urban environment can lead to efficient resource use, but also an understanding of how others live. Penetrating conversations about the deep history and uncertain future of the region and indeed all urban environments lingered long afterward, and floated out onto the sidewalk and beyond.