Meet two of Australia’s top science reporters with new books each tackling climate change from unique and urgent perspectives.
Jonica Newby’s Beyond Climate Grief provides guidance and emotional sustenance to help us face the uncertainties ahead, as she ponders the question, How do we find courage when climate change overwhelms us?
After researching what global warming will do to the snow country she loves, Newby plummeted into a state of climate grief. And if she was struggling, she wondered, how was everyone else coping? Beyond Climate Grief features illuminating conversations with singer–songwriter Missy Higgins, and comedians Charlie Pickering and Craig Reucassel, the wisdom of business leader Mike Cannon-Brookes, practical advice from psychological and scientific experts, and incredible accounts from everyday heroes, plus inspiring stories from the climate strike kids.
In Flames of Extinction: The race to save Australia’s threatened wildlife, John Pickrell investigates the effects of the 2019–2020 bushfires on Australian wildlife and ecosystems. Journeying across the firegrounds, Pickrell explores the stories of creatures that escaped the flames, the wildlife workers who rescued them, and the conservationists, land managers, Aboriginal rangers, ecologists and firefighters on the front line of the climate catastrophe. He also reveals the radical new conservation methods being trialled to save as many species as possible from the very precipice of extinction.
Join Jonica and John in conversation with journalist Louise Maher.
Tickets: $10
Jonica Newby is a science reporter, author, TV presenter and director best known for her two decades on ABC TV’s popular weekly science program, Catalyst. She has twice won the Eureka Award, Australia’s most prestigious science journalism prize, and is a recipient of a World TV Award. Originally trained as a veterinarian, her first book was The Animal Attraction.
John Pickrell is an award-winning freelance journalist, the author of Flying Dinosaurs and Weird Dinosaurs, and a former editor of Australian Geographic magazine. He has worked for publications including New Scientist, Science, Science News and Cosmos. John’s articles can be found online and in print at Nature, National Geographic, Scientific American, Focus, BBC Future, The Guardian and the ABC. He has been a finalist in the Australian Museum’s Eureka prizes three times, won an Earth Journalism Award and has frequently featured in The Best Australian Science Writing anthology.
Louise Maher worked for many years in radio as a reporter, presenter and producer including 25 years with the ABC. She produces a monthly podcast called Collected for the Australian War Memorial and her audio app for the National Portrait Gallery – In their own words – was launched late last year. Louise recently completed a series of video interviews of local authors for Libraries ACT and jumps at any excuse to pick up a book.