Literary Fest Panel: Killing Us Slowly featuring Mariah Blake

Environmental degradation is measured in numbers but felt in human loss. Please join us for a discussion of the insidious, often surprising ways in which industrial pollution has affected our lives, featuring three authors whose work is increasingly relevant as environmental protections and regulations are dismantled at an alarming rate. Pulitzer Prize–winning author Caroline Fraser grew up in the Pacific Northwest during Ted Bundy’s horrifying killing spree in the region. In Murderland, she examines how the increased incidence of serial killings in the 1970s and 1980s coincided with a rise in toxic emissions from smelters across the country. Were the two connected? In They Poisoned the World, investigative journalist Mariah Blake reveals the chemical industry’s decades-long cover-up of the dangers of forever chemicals and how one New York town was profoundly affected. The conversation will be led by Laura Paskus, author of At the Precipice and producer and host of the New Mexico PBS series Our Land: New Mexico’s Environmental Past, Present and Future.