I am thrilled to announce that Holding Back the River has been longlisted for the 2022 PEN/ E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award.

I was lucky enough to be interviewed by the insightful Stephanie Siu for a Q&A in the Los Angeles Review of Books. Living in a Changed Climate: A Conversation with Tyler J. Kelley

I spoke with Kyle Kellams, host of Ozarks at Large, about how levee breaches on the Arkansas River in 2019 spared Louisiana farmers in the Morganza Floodway. Who decides who gets wet and who stays dry? Listen here.

I spoke with host Adam Vos about the rising and falling of the Mississippi’s bed, one of many unintended consequences of last-century’s river management. As one scientist put it: “Just kicking the can about a century down the road.” Listen here (at 3:45).

I talked with host Doug Hamilton for his Main Street program about river mismanagement, and how flooding and farming can coexist. Listen here.

I’ll be in conversation with Anna Monardo, a fiction writer and professor of creative writing at the University of Nebraska, Omaha.

May 22 at 1pm Central/ 2pm Eastern, online and free.

 https://www.bookwormomaha.com/event/tyler-j-kelley

https://www.facebook.com/events/493924965386113/

Anna Monardo is a Writer’s Workshop professor at UNO and the author of two books. Her first novel, The Courtyard of Dreams, was translated into German, Norwegian and Danish, and was nominated for a PEN/Hemingway Award and recommended for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Monardo’s stories, essays and poems have been anthologized, featured on National Public Radio, and published or are forthcoming in The Sun, More, Salon.com, Huffington Post, Poets & Writers, Indiana Review, Redbook and other magazines and journals.
 

I spoke with Mississippi Edition host Karen Brown about how, when a big river like the Mississippi floods, the water has to go somewhere. Whether it’s oysters and dolphins v. the City of New Orleans, or Cario, Illinois v. Pinhook, Missouri–there are winners and losers. Listen here (starting at 18:40).

For the May 5 episode of The Climate Pod, I talked with host Brock Benefiel about continuing the American way of life in a wetter world. Listen here.

Every office of every towboat company I ever visited had a stack of Waterways Journals, which is why I subscribed to it for several years while I was writing Holding Back the River. I’m thrilled to now appear in its pages via this thoughtful review by David Murray.

Besides being well-written and offering a basinwide understanding of water-management issues affecting the Mississippi River, Kelley’s book is especially timely as Congress debates another huge infrastructure bill, a debate that could last all summer.