Torbjörn E. Törnqvist & Nathaniel Rich: New Stories for a New Climate
A conversation between coastal geologist Torbjörn Törnqvist and writer Nathaniel Rich will explore the challenges of researching and writing about a future rendered unrecognizable by climate change. The discussion will braid the central insights of Törnqvist’s recent research on the future of the Gulf South and Rich's new novel, Cloudthief, about a disillusioned climate journalist who takes up a second career in crime. How does geological historyand storytelling shape our cultural understanding of the climate crisis? After all seems lost, what remains?
Dr. Torbjörn E. Törnqvist, born in Uppsala, Sweden, earned his M.S. (1988) and Ph.D. (1993) in Physical Geography from Utrecht University in the Netherlands. His doctoral research focused on the Holocene evolution of the Rhine–Meuse Delta. After six years of postdoctoral research at Utrecht University and Louisiana State University, he joined the University of Illinois at Chicago as a tenure-track faculty member in 1999. In 2005—just days before Hurricane Katrina—he joined Tulane University as an Associate Professor and was promoted to Full Professor in 2010.
Dr. Törnqvist is internationally recognized for his contributions to coastal geoscience. His research addresses the rapid degradation of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands and leverages the late Quaternary geologic record to understand the evolution of fluvial, deltaic, and coastal systems under external drivers such as sea-level and climate change. A major focus of his work is reconstructing past sea-level changes along the U.S. Gulf Coast to improve projections of future trends. He also investigates coastal subsidence and its implications for restoration and resilience strategies.
His scholarship has been widely cited and featured in national media outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, PBS NewsHour, CNN, and CBS News. Dr. Törnqvist.
Nathaniel Rich is the author of Cloudthief (July 2026) and three previous novels, all New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice selections. He has also written two works of nonfiction on environmental themes: Second Nature (2021), which includes the story that serves as the basis for the film Dark Waters; and Losing Earth (2019), a winner of several national science writing awards, which has been published in 12 languages and is currently being adapted into a film by the Oscar-winning director Tom McCarthy. Rich is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and a frequent contributor to Harper's and the New York Review of Books. He is a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow.