Welcome Abby Seiff as she discusses Troubling the Water: A Dying Lake and a Vanishing World in Cambodia with guest, author Elizabeth Becker!
About Troubling the Water:
In this intimate account of one of the world’s most productive inland fisheries, Troubling the Water explores how the rapid destruction of a single lake in Cambodia is upending the lives of millions. The abundance of Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake helped grow the country for millenia and gave rise to the Kingdom of Angkor. Fed by the rich, mud-colored waters of the powerful Mekong River, the lake owes its vast bounty to an ecological miracle that has captivated poets, artisans, and explorers throughout history.
But today, the lake is dying. Hydropower dams hold back billions of gallons of water and disrupt critical fish migration paths. On the lake, illegal fishing abetted by corruption is now unstoppable. A fast-changing climate, meanwhile, has seen a string of devastating droughts.
Troubling the Water follows ordinary Cambodians coping with the rapid erasure of a long-held way of life. Drawing on years of reporting in Cambodia, Abby Seiff traces the changes on the Tonle Sap—weaving together vivid stories of those most affected with sharp insight into one of the most threatened lakes in the world. For the millions who depend on it, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
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Abby Seiff: Award-winning journalist with 10 years experience reporting and editing in Asia-Pacific and the US. Extensive experience writing and editing news, features, investigations and reports for the public and private sector. My writing and photography have been published in numerous leading international publications including Newsweek, TIME Magazine, the Economist, the Associated Press, the Guardian, the New York Times, Al Jazeera, and many more. My probe of the Global Fund program in Cambodia won honorable mention for investigative reporting at the 2013 SOPA awards.
Elizabeth Becker began her career as a war correspondent for the Washington Post in Cambodia. She has been the Senior Foreign Editor for National Public Radio and a New York Times correspondent covering national security, economics and foreign policy. She has won accolades from the Overseas Press Club, DuPont Columbia’s Awards and was part the Times team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of 9/11. She is the author of When the War was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Revolution, the classic history that has been in print for 35 years; and Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism, an expose of the travel industry that was an Amazon book of the year.
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This event will be hosted in-person at Lost City Books! Masks will be required of all attendees.
Accessibility note: This event will be held up two fight of stairs. Lost City Books does not have an elevator. This event will be simultaneously live streamed on our YouTube page!
Troubling the Water: A Dying Lake and a Vanishing World in Cambodia will be available at Lost City Books!