The seminar on the Literature of the Sea welcomes Rosanna Xia, award-winning environmental reporter for the Los Angeles Times.

Xia will lead a conversation about her book California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline (2023) and her reporting and documentary work on ocean disposal of toxic chemicals.

This is an open classroom event that welcomes the JHU community. Gilman Hall Room 219

More about Rosanna Xia from her LA Times bio:

Rosanna Xia is an environmental reporter for the Los Angeles Times, where she specializes in stories about the coast and ocean. She was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2020 for her reporting on sea level rise, and her celebrated book, “California Against the Sea,” received the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, a gold medal from the California Book Awards, and a “Great Reads from Great Places” citation from the Library of Congress, among other honors. She has been praised for her investigative reporting and narrative storytelling, and her coverage of a toxic dumpsite in the deep ocean has been anthologized in the “Best American Science and Nature Writing” series.

Her most recent project, the feature documentary “Out of Plain Sight,” is a cinematic expansion of one of Xia’s most haunting environmental exposés. The film, which she directed and produced, was selected as Slamdance’s 2025 opening night film, and it has won numerous film festival honors, including the audience award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and the Berkshire International Film Festival.