Madeline

Ostrander

Environmental Journalist

Author

Travels from: Seattle, WA

“A hopeful, urgent, and universal message about our collective ability to face the climate changes we can no longer ignore.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Madeline Ostrander is an environmental journalist and the author of At Home on an Unruly Planet: Finding Refuge on a Changed Earth. Named one of Kirkus Review’s 100 best nonfiction books of 2022, Unruly Planet tells the stories of four American communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis. A vivid and deeply reported work of “searching intelligence and uncommon empathy,” in the words of Pulitzer-prize-winner Elizabeth Kolbert, the book reflects on what it means to find strength and resilience in this era of upheaval and transition.

Ostrander is a 2023-24 Knight Science Journalism fellow at MIT. Her work has appeared in the The Atlantic, The NewYorker.com, The Nation, Sierra Magazine, PBS’s NOVA Next, Slate, High Country News, Audubon, and numerous other outlets. She’s appeared as a guest on a wide range of public radio programs—from Baltimore and Louisville to Salt Lake City and San Francisco—as well as PBS’s The Open Mind. Her reporting on climate change and environmental justice has taken her to locations such as the Alaskan Arctic and the Australian Outback. She’s received grants, fellowships, and residencies from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Artist Trust, the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism, the Fund for Investigative Journalism, the Jack Straw Cultural Center, the Mesa Refuge, Hedgebrook, and Edith Cowan University in Australia.

Ostrander also teaches narrative journalism, science-writing, essay-writing, and nonfiction at Seattle’s Hugo House and has offered workshops at numerous other venues, including the Knight Science Journalism Fellowship Program at MIT the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers Centre in Western Australia.

She is the former senior editor of YES! Magazine and holds a master’s degree in environmental science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Madeline's Featured Titles

At Home on an Unruly Planet: Finding Refuge on a Changed Earth

Henry Holt and Co. |

August 2, 2022

Nonfiction

From rural Alaska to coastal Florida, a vivid account of Americans working to protect the places they call home in an era of climate crisis

How do we find a sense of home and rootedness in a time of unprecedented upheaval? What happens when the seasons and rhythms in which we have built our lives go off-kilter?

Once a distant forecast, climate change is now reaching into the familiar, threatening our basic safety and forcing us to reexamine who we are and how we live. In At Home on an Unruly Planet, science journalist Madeline Ostrander reflects on this crisis not as an abstract scientific or political problem but as a palpable force that is now affecting all of us at home. She offers vivid accounts of people fighting to protect places they love from increasingly dangerous circumstances. A firefighter works to rebuild her town after catastrophic western wildfires. A Florida preservationist strives to protect one of North America’s most historic cities from rising seas. An urban farmer struggles to transform a California city plagued by fossil fuel disasters. An Alaskan community heads for higher ground as its land erodes.

Ostrander pairs deeply reported stories of hard-won optimism with lyrical essays on the strengths we need in an era of crisis. The book is required reading for anyone who wants to make a home in the twenty-first century.

Environmental Concerns, Journalism

The Power of Home in a Time of Crisis

How do we find a sense of home in a time of unprecedented upheaval? Can we protect the places and communities we love from increasingly dangerous circumstances?

In this talk, Ostrander reflects on how to reckon with climate change as a palpable force that is now affecting all of us at home. She offers vivid accounts of communities that have journeyed through fires, floods, and other crises and people who have learned how to rebuild, prepare, and plan—and how to reimagine the future. She distills a series of insights about what it takes to find resilience in a time of crisis. Optional extended workshop: Ostrander works with participants to brainstorm what they value most in their own communities and consider how they might reach out to others who share their concerns.

Kitchen-Table Talk About Climate Crisis

It’s a common misconception—debunked by psychologists—that others around us care less environmental issues than we ourselves do. But the myth keeps us silent—afraid to start an argument or raise uncomfortable questions. How do we talk about climate change as a kitchen-table issue? Start at home. Ostrander illustrates how through stories from politically divided communities that have found common ground to face environmental challenges.

Facing Ecological Grief and Anxiety, Finding Refuge and Resilience

According to the American Psychological Association, more than two-thirds of Americans feel anxious about the climate crisis, and internationally, three-quarters of young adults and teens are fearful about the future. How do we face our fears and grief over the state of the world and still find the means to take action and fight to protect what matters? This talk reflects on what scientists and philosophers say about handling grief and angst: it’s possible to find strength through community and face what scares us. Optional extended workshop: Ostrander leads participants through a series of writing exercises and discussions to process grief and anxiety and seek both solace and empowerment.

Climate Solutions from the Grassroots

In the fight against climate catastrophe, “many of the most ambitious strides have come from the grassroots, from the marchers and protesters,

the small-town mayors, the artists and teachers and musicians, the firefighters and farmers and scientists, the people who have their hands in the dirt, the people who are able to reimagine how to live,” writes Ostrander in her book, At Home on an Unruly Planet. Ostrander has spent nearly 15 years reporting on breakthroughs that have emerged from frontline and environmental justice communities. In this talk, Ostrander describes how listening to these communities is vital to understanding how to make political, cultural, and economic transitions away from fossil fuels and toward sustainability. We’ll talk about how such communities are advocating for stronger federal and state climate policies, building collective strength to face down the fossil fuel industry, and launching groundbreaking grassroots initiatives in a time of climate emergency. (This talk can also be organized as a panel discussion to include a range of additional voices from the grassroots.)

Telling Stories about Climate

How do you reach beyond science, data, and projections and tell the story of climate change to compel, motivate, and enlighten others? Do we need new language, narratives, and plotlines for an era of climate crisis, and what can we learn from the great storytellers, artists, and authors? In this workshop, Ostrander helps scientists, scholars, writers, community members, environmental professionals, activists, and others find the words to convey their own experiences, hopes, and concerns about climate change through vivid and engaging storytelling.

MetcalfInstitute | Book Talk with Madeline Ostrander and Christine Woodside

Seattle Channel | “At Home on an Unruly Planet” explores rootedness in a time of upheaval

Powell’s Books | Madeline Ostrander presents At Home on an Unruly Planet, in conversation with Michelle Nijhuis

Politics and Prose | P&P Live! Madeline Ostrander — At Home on an Unruly Planet – with Laura Helmuth

“The focus of our annual Bainbridge Island Environmental Conference in 2023 was climate change. Madeline Ostrander’s book, At Home on an Unruly Planet, provided the common touchstone for consideration prior to the conference. Her keynote presentation brought to life the people and situations our community had read about and made them even more relatable for conference participants. In the follow-up breakout sessions, community members were inspired to approach climate change issues and create solutions, harkening back to the examples Ostrander provided for us.” — Maradel Gale (Sustainable Bainbridge) and Lara Hansen (EcoAdapt) on behalf of the Bainbridge Island Environmental Conference Steering Committee

“What does it mean to maintain a sense of place in an age of climate change? In At Home on an Unruly Planet, Madeline Ostrander explores this question with searching intelligence and uncommon empathy.”
—Elizabeth Kolbert, New York Times bestselling author of The Sixth Extinction

“Home may be the most pungent word in the language—and it’s no longer something any of us can take for granted, as a rapidly changing planet mocks our ideas of permanence and stability. As Madeline Ostrander makes clear in this marvelous book, resilience is a new watchword: we’re going to have to be light on our feet, even as we plant them in home ground!”
—Bill McKibben, New York Times bestselling author of The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened

“Ostrander visits with communities on the front lines of climate change and comes away with stories of hope, hardship, and resilience. Her book reminds us that home isn’t a place so much as a process: a radical act of continuous creation and renewal.”
—Jessica Bruder, New York Times bestselling author of Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century

“With deep, compassionate reporting and elegant prose, Madeline Ostrander takes us into the lives of those rebuilding communities in the wake of climate disasters. Amid the devastation and loss, she finds creativity, vital hope, and a sense of home that outlasts any address.”
—Michelle Nijhuis, author of Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction

“In this beautiful, troubling, deeply compassionate book, Madeline Ostrander explores our home planet in this moment of climate-driven fire and flood, and asks one of the most important questions of our time. How do we define a home when it is changing under our feet? What she finds makes At Home on an Unruly Planet a don’t-miss book.”
—Deborah Blum, Pulitzer-prize-winning author of The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz-Age New York

“The braided stories in this book bring it home to us—we are already in the climate emergency, and seldom is it made clearer than here that it is a polycrisis, hitting us on many fronts and levels in ways that won’t be going away. What’s encouraging is the strength, cleverness, and resiliency of the people who fill these pages, coping with new situations that won’t be going away. Above all, this is a hopeful book, and an encouragement to act.”
—Kim Stanley Robinson, New York Times bestselling author of The Ministry for the Future

“As each new climate calamity obliterates, incinerates, or engulfs entire communities, we shudder to think our own could be next. Gently but purposefully, Ostrander guides us into places that have known this nightmare, not to shock but to show that the meaning of home is so powerful that people will make surprising, imaginative, even transcendent leaps to hold on to theirs. By her book’s end, you realize that maybe you could, too.”
—Alan Weisman, author of The World Without Us and Countdown

“A gripping and sometimes raw look at the personal costs of climate change, this book places our everyday experiences of home in the context of decades of environmental movements and eons of geologic time. Heartbreaking, but also funny and hopeful—you won’t want to put it down, and you won’t be able to forget it.”
—Annalee Newitz, author of Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age

“From fires to floods to sea-level rise, Ostrander exposes readers to the serious impacts of climate change through the eyes of ordinary Americans. Meet Susan, Glenn, Jenny, and Lisa—all of their stories underscore the impact of global change on our homes. This book is a must-read for assessing the future of life on Earth.”
—Meg Lowman, author of The Arbornaut: A Life Discovering the Eighth Continent in the Trees Above Us

“A hopeful, urgent, and universal message about our collective ability to face the climate changes we can no longer ignore.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Pick up a copy of At Home on an Unruly Planet…you’ll feel that deep, meditative connection between the frightening but solvable realities of climate change and a place that you have once called home, too.”
—Arizona Republic

Madeline’s Articles, Essays, and Other Writing

Honors, Awards & Recognition

Kirkus Review’s 100 Best Nonfiction Books of 2022
2019 GAP Award

Received grants, fellowships, and residencies from:
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
Artist Trust
USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism
Fund for Investigative Journalism
Jack Straw Cultural Center
Mesa Refuge
Hedgebrook
Edith Cowan University in Australia