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Obi Kaufmann

@coyotethunder

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Author and artist of The California Field Atlas series. Order the books now at www.californiafieldatlas.com

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📚 Meet Author Obi Kaufmann @coyotethunder

Obi Kaufmann is an award-winning author, artist, naturalist, and conservationist known for exploring California’s remarkable landscapes and ecosystems.

He is the author of the bestselling California Field Atlas series, blending science, hand-drawn maps, painting, and lyrical prose to reveal the connections between nature, history, and conservation.

A lifelong explorer of California’s wilderness, Kaufmann serves on the board of the California Wilderness Coalition and received the 2019 Mark Dubois River Protection Award.

📚 Meet Obi Kaufmann at the 2026 Twentynine Palms Book Festival!

November 13–15
📍 29pbf.com

#29plambookfestival #29PBF #AuthorSpotlight #MeetTheAuthor by @coyotethunder

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3 days ago

Thank you to everyone who came to the book launch party at Temescal Brewery last night. Apparently, we sold all the beer that featured my art on the label, so that’ll be a nice bucket of cash for the Center for Biological Diversity. They showed up in force last night, and as a total fanboy of their work, I was a little starstruck. Thank you Michelle @goldenstatenaturalist for the picture. Today I learned that my new book, California Inside Out, is now sitting at number seven on the Northern California nonfiction hardcover bestseller list. I am thrilled, honored, and elated to share this news. In this post, I am also including the text from the Kirkus starred review the book received—my first such award for any of my books—and I’m again honored and humbled by the recognition. In local media today, the Chico Enterprise Record and the East Bay Express reviewed my book in print and online—another true honor. I am deeply grateful to the reporters who wrote the reviews: Dan Barnett and Janis Hashe. Lastly, I am happy to share that tomorrow night, Thursday, Oct 15, at 7:00 pm, I will be sitting on a panel—at KLAW’s studios, as part of San Francisco’s Litquake series of ongoing events—with authors Laura Cunningham (The State of Change, Heyday, 2026) and Dillon Osleger (Trail Work, Heyday, 2026). Author Leslie Carol Roberts (Here is where I walk, Univ. of Nevada Press, 2019) will moderate our panel. The title of our panel is “A 22nd-Century Conservation Ethos for California,” and the description reads “ A panel exploring modern ecological estrangement, traditional ecological knowledge, restoration, and a new conservation ethos for California.” Tickets are available through Litquake and Eventbrite. Onwards! and thank you. by @coyotethunder

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3 days ago

A full house in Santa Rosa! Thank you to Copperfields Books and to my brother in authorship and podcasts, Chairman Greg Sarris, for joining me on stage last week to celebrate the new book California Inside Out. Greg is still in the honeymoon phase with his latest masterwork, The Last Human Bear—if you haven’t procured a copy yet, consider running out to the bookstore tonight, in honor of Indigenous Peoples Day, and celebrating with my favorite read of the year. I will be rounding out the evening, finishing Louise Erdrich’s 1996 novel, Tales of Burning Love. I’ve recently been turned on to Erdrich’s work, and each title is funnier and more heartbreaking than the last. An excellent juxtaposition to Sarris’ fiction. Tomorrow night is the official launch party for my new book and the debut of the collaborative beer I made with my friends at Temescal Brewery on Telegraph Ave in Oakland. I hope to see you there, and to thank everyone who came out to the event last week and to the subsequent events I was part of at the Tahoe Literary Festival last weekend. The whirlwind is as profound as it is beautiful. @thegregsarris @heydaybooks @temescalbeer @copperfieldsbooks #californiainsideout by @coyotethunder

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6 days ago

A Paddle and a Conversation with Obi Kaufmann🌞🛶

Join Kayak + Connect on Sunday, November 1st for a day of nature, art, and connection celebrating author and artist Obi Kaufmann and his new book. @coyotethunder

Begin with an optional guided paddle on Tomales Bay from 10AM to 1 PM, departing from Miller Boat Launch. Enjoy the wildlife, take in the coastal scenery, and explore with care for the waters we share.

Then join us at Straus Home Ranch from 2 to 4 PM for a one-hour talk with Obi, followed by a reception with healthy, plant based refreshments and time to connect.

Choose the full paddle, talk, and reception experience, or join us for the talk and reception only.

Sunday, November 1, 2026
Guided paddle: 10 AM to 1 PM at Miller Boat Launch
Talk and reception: 2 to 4 PM at Straus Home Ranch
22888 State Route 1, Marshall, CA

https://kayakandconnect.com/events/obi-kaufmann

#kayakandconnect #tomalesbay #bayareaevents #bayarea taken in Marshall, California by @coyotethunder

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10 days ago

What an incredible time this book launch is turning into. Sunday night, I was honored to speak at Sonoma Land Trust’s 50th anniversary party, and similarly, last week I was invited to deliver the keynote at greenfoothills.org’s annual fete, this year called “Nature’s Inspiration.” Today is the official launch date for CALIFORNIA INSIDE OUT; MAPPING AN ECOLOGY OF MIND (Heyday Books), and I am headed to Book Shop Westportal in San Francisco for a talk and signing event. Thursday night is a reunion with my pal and podcast cohost, author, and Graton Chairman Greg Sarris at Copperfield’s in Santa Rosa. It’ll be a Place and Purpose reunion. I’ll be spending quite some time on the road this fall, promoting this new work, and if you are curious about where I will be, please check out the calendar page at www.californiafieldatlas.com. And thank you for your support and for supporting your local bookstore. @heydaybooks @bookshopwestportal @copperfieldsbooks @thegregsarris @sonomalandtrust @greenfoothills by @coyotethunder

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12 days ago

Next week, the new book launches and I head out on tour. Finding the community, this electric citizenry, ready to participate in the scripting of the next episode of human residency in California, is an easy and joyful task. The good people are everywhere, and the hype regarding the world’s demise is a narrative worthy of serious rebuttal, and we are ready to offer that voice of resiliency and survival. I’ll be joined by many friends, on stage at many venues over the next couple of months, and I can’t wait for the wonderful engagement and dialogue regarding what is true, what is beautiful, what continues to be, and what will always persist in this most wonderful of all lands, this most wonderful of all responsibilities, this California. #californiafieldatlas #californiainsideout by @coyotethunder

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16 days ago

The first reviews of the new book, California Inside Out (Publication Date: Oct. 6, HEYDAY BOOKS), are coming in. Today’s Chronicle review is particularly gratifying. I find the whole process of writing a book and sending it off is a bit like a message in a bottle. I share it with my friends, my editors, and my publisher, but how will it do on its own in the wild? Will it, or, even worse, can it be understood? With reviews like this, I can breathe a sigh of relief. Writer/critic Zack Ruskin gets it, and gets it acutely. The title of the review doesn’t quite square with the body, so I wonder if an editor inserted it on top Zack’s piece. I’m not sure what they meant by me calling for nature to speak up. I think, and I imagine Zack would agree with me, that I present a world in which nature is doing a fine job of explaining itself. @heydaybooks by @coyotethunder

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21 days ago

Come usher in the new book, California Inside Out, with me at the brewery, and lift a pint of our new beer in celebration and support of The Center for Biological Diversity. I hope to see you in a couple of weeks, on Tuesday the 13th. I’ll have a big stack of the new book sitting next to a big stack of the new beer, lovingly crafted by the folk at Temescal Brewery, with a nice collector’s edition label featuring my wildlife renderings. #californiafieldatlas @temescalbeer @centerforbiodiv by @coyotethunder

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23 days ago

What if “mind” isn’t something that belongs exclusively to humans?

In 𝘾𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙣𝙞𝙖 𝙄𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙙𝙚 𝙊𝙪𝙩: 𝙈𝙖𝙥𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖𝙣 𝙀𝙘𝙤𝙡𝙤𝙜𝙮 𝙤𝙛 𝙈𝙞𝙣𝙙, bestselling author and creator of the California Field Atlas series Obi Kaufmann (@coyotethunder) challenges our most fundamental assumptions about consciousness, nature, and our place within the living world.

Part manifesto, part lyrical meditation, the book asks us to reconsider the boundaries we’ve drawn between human and nonhuman, mind and matter, wilderness and civilization. What if rivers have agency? What if watersheds have volition? What if wildfire is not simply a force to control, but an essential part of a living system?

Drawing from Traditional Ecological Knowledge, deep time, and the work of naturalists including Aldo Leopold, Gary Snyder, and Robin Wall Kimmerer, Kaufmann searches for a new ecological ethic rooted in kinship, mutuality, and a recognition of the intelligence and agency woven throughout the more-than-human world.

𝘾𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙣𝙞𝙖 𝙄𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙙𝙚 𝙊𝙪𝙩 invites us to imagine a different story for California—and offers “an urgent message for the future.” (—@kirkus_reviews, ★ starred review)

🌿 𝘾𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙣𝙞𝙖 𝙄𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙙𝙚 𝙊𝙪𝙩: 𝙈𝙖𝙥𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖𝙣 𝙀𝙘𝙤𝙡𝙤𝙜𝙮 𝙤𝙛 𝙈𝙞𝙣𝙙
📖 On sale October 6, 2026

#ObiKaufmann #CaliforniaFieldAtlas #Ecophilosophy taken in California by @coyotethunder

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24 days ago

❊
Obi Kaufmann @coyotethunder is an award-winning author of six best-selling books on California’s ecology, biodiversity, & geography. Most famously, his 2017 book The California Field Atlas, currently in its seventh printing, recontextualized popular ideas about what he calls “California’s more-than-human world.” His subsequent books—The State of Water: Understanding California’s Most Precious Resource & The California Lands Trilogy (The Forests of California, The Coasts of California, & The Deserts of California)—present a comprehensive survey of California’s physiography & biogeography in terms of both its evolutionary past & its unfolding future. Most recently, Obi was a featured artist for the National Gallery of Art in Yosemite (2025) & served as artist-in-residence for the National Park Service at Whiskeytown National Recreation Area (2023). His latest Field Atlas, The Deserts of California, received the 2024 Book Award for California Lifestyle from the California Independent Booksellers Association. 2024’s The State of Fire: Why California Burns, is among his most popular & timely works to date. A lifelong resident of California, Obi lives in Oakland when he is not backpacking. His most recent book is California Inside Out: Mapping an Ecology of Mind, & he’s at work on a second California Lands Trilogy.

Obi’s workshop for the EarthSpells Institute ➸
Poetry, Place, & Policy: Expressions of Cognitive Ecology
The land speaks in watersheds & weather, in birdsong & bedrock, in roots & rivers, in stories unfolding within the coevolving parameters of disturbance, adaptation, & resilience. Anthropic ecology examines humanity not as standing apart from the more-than-human world, but as an expression of it, while mythopoesis asks us to imagine that the world is not merely composed of objects, but of conscious agents whose stories are readily available. ...

We're a year-long habitat for ecological writers.

✨Gather with us for a free seed swap
October 1 at 7:00-8:15 pm EST on zoom & find out more about our program
Comment ECOLOGY or find the link in our bio to register! ✨

#morethanhuman #writingcommunity #mythopoetic #california #nature taken in California by @coyotethunder

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a month ago

Yesterday’s post deserves analysis and some clarification. I gave a very dense, functional definition of what a watershed is and what it is as a significant ecological unit of land and hydrology. Beyond its physical structure (watersheds are defined by topography and hydrology), I am interested in watersheds as a unit of coevolved community. I jotted down some notes defining some of the opaque phrases I used in my definition, and I present them here, and have them posted in the comments. I could write a book about this watershed definition. I probably should.

The watershed is a spatially cellular physiographic entity representing a cybernetically entangled community of agent-species that collectively increase resilience by adaptively responding to endemic processes across a landscape of shared nutrient flows and disturbance regimes. by @coyotethunder

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a month ago

The watershed is a spatially cellular physiographic entity representing a cybernetically entangled community of agent-species that collectively increases the local ecological resiliency by adaptively responding to endemic processes across a land and waterscape of shared nutrient flows and disturbance regimes.

Ecological cybernetics is the study of the feedback processes that organize and sustain living systems. It explains how information exchanged among organisms and their environments gives rise to adaptation, resilience, and ecological persistence. taken in Arthotel Tornedalen by @coyotethunder

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a month ago