Lauren Groff is a National Book Award finalist for her third consecutive book.

The weekend oil leak along the Southern California coast happened not far from the site of the catastrophe more than a generation ago that helped give rise to the modern environmental movement itself: the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill.

Udall is retiring from the Senate, but has emerged as a leading contender to be Interior secretary under President-elect Joe Biden. He has urged a shift in land and ocean management away from world-beating oil and gas production to tackling climate change and preserving wilderness. Oil and gas produced from public lands accounts for as much as one-fourth of U.S. carbon emissions. Udall says the Biden plan would make public lands “carbon neutral” by 2030, meaning the lands would absorb as much carbon dioxide as they emit from energy production. As the effects of climate change continue to worsen, “Congress will increasingly feel pressure from the public to get things done,'' Udall said.