Writing About Climate Change with Paul Bierman, Megan Mayhew, Emma Paris, and Amy Seidl | 2026 Green Mountain Book Festival: Climate Critters & Canopies

Join acclaimed nature writers and researchers Paul Bierman, Megan Mayhew, Emma Paris, and Amy Seidl for a panel focused on Writing About Climate Change. This panel will be held on Saturday, September 19th from 1:30 until 2:30 PM as part of the 2026 Green Mountain Book Festival: Climate Critters & Canopies hosted at Phoenix Books Burlington. 

Paul Bierman is a Professor of Environmental Science at the University of Vermont, where he develops methods to understand ice and date rocks. His passions include telling stories and solving the mysteries of our planet. A researcher by training and a teacher for over four decades, Paul looks at our planet with wonder and curiosity. His career has taken him to searing deserts and frigid ice sheets to build an understanding of the link between our Earth and human societies - what today we call, sustainability. His articles have appeared in Science and Nature, and his findings have been convered by CNN, the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Weather Channel, among others. 

Megan Mayhew is an award-winning fiction writer, conservation journalist, filmmaker, and cultural critic. She serves as Director of Conservation and Policy Communication for Mass Audubon, and Director of the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference. She is the author of four books and her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Paris Review, Harper’s Bazaar, and elsewhere.

Emma Paris is the 2025-26 Vermont Youth Poet Laureate, and a sophomore at Bennington College, where she studies Poetry and Environmental Science. Emma has been published in journals such as Chautauqua, Zaum Magazine, Chariot Press, Harpur Palate, MORIA Literary Magazine, Snaggletooth Magazine, and more. She has an American Voices Nomination from Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, is a 2025 Adroit Prizes Commended Writer, and has been nominated for the 2026 Pushcart Prize. Emma has interned at both Green Writers Press, and the Bennington Review, working on their respective editorial staffs. 

Amy L. Seidl is a Senior Lecturer in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources. Amy's areas of scholarship include ecological and evolutionary responses to climate change, climate change communication, ecological planning and climate adaptation, and the intersection of climate change and the humanities.

She has published two books on climate change. The titles include Early Spring: An Ecologist and Her Children Wake to a Warming World (2009) and Finding Higher Ground: Adaptation in an Age of Warming (2012). She is currently at work on a piece of climate fiction. 

DATE: Saturday, September 19, 2026 from 1:30 until 2:30 PM 

LOCATION: Phoenix Books Burlington, 89 Church Street, Burlington, VT 

TICKETS: Tickets for this panel are FREE! The Green Mountain Book Festival will be accepting cash donations during the event. You can RSVP through the Seven Days Tickets website. 

BOOKS: Copies of books by the panelists will be available for purchase at the event.