Madeline

Ostrander

Science 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)

I am a journalist who writes about humans and our ongoing struggles to find an appropriate place on this round, blue planet. My book, At Home on an Unruly Planet tells the stories of four American communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis—and reflects on what it means to make a home in this era of upheaval and transition.

Much of my reporting focuses on climate, energy, and environmental justice, but I’ve also covered a wide range of other topics, including social movements, protest songs, food, agriculture, neuroscience, and health. My writing has appeared in The NewYorker.com, The Nation, Sierra Magazine, Audubon Magazine, Slate, PBS NOVA Next, Seattle Met Magazine, Undark, Hakai, High Country News, and numerous other outlets. Along the way, I’ve had support from grants, fellowships, and residencies from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Artist Trust, 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.

I come from a family of teachers and educators, and I also love offering workshops and classes. I often teach nonfiction writing at Seattle’s venerable Hugo House and have given workshops at various other writers’ centers and retreats.

I am also the former senior editor of YES! Magazine and hold a master’s degree in environmental science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I’ve previously caught crickets for an entomologist, taught composition to business majors in rural Uganda and biology to pre-med students, helped coordinate urban policy programs in Washington, D.C., and worked in a reservation community along a river in rural South Dakota.

I live in Seattle with my husband—who is a community mental health counselor and a kind, adventurous human—and a sweet feline. In my spare time, I tend a raspberry patch in the backyard and make frequent excursions by boot and bicycle into the extraordinary forest, mountain, and coastal landscapes of the Pacific Northwest. I am also a songwriter and musician, a bean-eater, a kayak-paddler, and an auntie.

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.

Climate Change, Environmental Concerns, Female Author, Journalism

Weaving Science into Story

Many of the most important stories of our time are grounded in or heavily influenced by science. But the story of science is rarely well-told. At its best, like any good narrative, science is a search for insight. But its pursuit can also magnify the worst human tendencies—hubris, injustice, and exploitation. In this class, we’ll discuss how to weave science into personal stories and explore what is at once beautiful, vital, and occasionally monstrous about the search for answers.

Building Characters from Real Life

Characters breathe life into a story, turning an abstract idea into a vivid representation of human experience. In nonfiction, writers build characters from the raw and messy material of real life. In this class, we’ll talk about techniques for rendering yourself and others as characters through scenes, dialog, and telling details. We’ll explore strategies from nonfiction, memoir, and journalism for researching and digging deeply into the thoughts, habits, manners, quirks, and substance of your characters.

Finding Refuge and Resilience in Climate Crisis

In a time of climate crisis, the very definition of what it means to live an ethical life is in flux. Explore the search for purpose, ethics, and resilience in an unruly world, at this book talk / discussion / mini writers’ workshop featuring journalist and author Madeline Ostrander.

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

“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

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

2019 GAP Award