Bozeman Magazine

The Ivan Doig Center at Montana State University is proud to announce a public event featuring writer and geographer Caroline Tracey on November 18th at 5:30pm at Hager Auditorium at Museum of the Rockies as the Doig Center's Fall 2026 Perspectives on the American West speaker. The evening will feature an in-depth interview, a reading, and a discussion focused on Tracey’s evocative new book, Salt Lakes: An Unnatural History (W.W. Norton, 2026). The event is free and open to the public, with refreshments provided. Salt Lakes: An Unnatural History is a sweeping blend of environmental reportage and memoir. In the book, Tracey travels from the Great Salt Lake to the Aral Sea, documenting the precarious state of the world’s salt lake ecosystems. Through a global lens—spanning the American West, Mexico, Argentina, and Kazakhstan—Tracey explores how these drying waters serve as harbingers of larger climate crises, including dust storms and rising sea levels. Interweaving archival research, including Mormon diaries and Soviet realist novels, with a personal odyssey of queer love and identity, Tracey crafts a moving call to protect the most fragile elements of our natural and personal worlds. The conversation at the Ivan Doig Center will delve into the intersection of geography, history, journalism, and memoir; how the physical degradation of these liminal landscapes mirrors and influences human identity; and the broader lessons salt lakes teach us about life in the Anthropocene. Attendees can expect a discussion on the diverse, global efforts underway to live in relation to these extraordinary ecosystems. About Caroline Tracey Caroline Tracey is a journalist, critic, and scholar whose work focuses on the environment, migration, and the arts in the US Southwest, Mexico, and their borderlands. She holds a doctorate in geography from the University of California, Berkeley. Tracey is the recipient of the Waterston Prize for Desert Writing, the inaugural On the Brinck/Places Prize, and grants from the Andy Warhol Foundation and the Silvers Foundation. Her reporting and criticism have appeared in The New Yorker, New York Review of Books, n+1, High Country News, and The Nation. She has served as a visiting professor at Deep Springs College and currently lives between Tucson, Arizona, and Mexico City.