Author Talk: Ecofiction with Nina Schuyler and Holly Payne

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Photo courtesy of the author

The Mill Valley Library presents a special conversation with award-winning author Nina Schuyler in honor of her inventive new ecological novel, Open the Floodgates.

In an unnamed California town, the River is granted personhood and has the right—and urgent need—to argue in court for its existence. But powerful, well-funded enemies are determined to keep the River exactly as it is: gunk-filled, toxic, a convenient dumping ground for waste. The story moves like water, entering the minds of the town’s people, pigeons, deer, dogs, cats, the trees, the River’s home, and the River itself. When the River is ultimately jailed, the town faces a reckoning: what do we owe the River? And the River must answer in turn: what, if anything, does it owe humans?

Nina Schuyler is the author of four other fiction books and teaches creative writing at Stanford Continuing Studies and the independent bookstore, Book Passage. Nina Schuyler’s newest short story collection, In this Ravishing World, won the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, the W.S. Porter Prize for Short Story Collections, and the Prism Prize for Climate Literature. It was also a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. She graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in Economics and earned a law degree at UC Law San Francisco. She is also the author of How to Write Stunning Sentences and has an extensive following of her Substack newsletter of the same name.

Holly Lynn Payne is an award-winning, internationally published author, book coach and story development editor, and the host and producer of the Page One Podcast. Her bestselling novel, Rose Girl, won a Kirkus starred review and was named Editor’s Choice from the Historical Novel Society. The Virgin’s Knot (Penguin/Dutton), was named a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers book, and Kingdom of Simplicity won the Benjamin Franklin Award from IBPA. She earned a master’s degree from USC, BA in journalism from the University of Richmond, and has served on the faculty of the California College of the Arts, Academy of Art University, San Francisco State University and Stanford University. She is the former CEO and founder of Booxby, a startup that built AI powered book discovery software, backed by a grant from the National Science Foundation. She lives in Marin County with her daughter and dog and can be found getting dirty on trails. Find her on IG @hollylynnpayne and Power of Page One Substack.

Our bookseller for this event will be the Friends of the Mill Valley Library Bookstore.

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.