Author Cameron Walker will present a book talk and signing of her short story collection, “How to Capture Carbon,” 3 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 23 at Chaucer’s Books, 3321 State St., Santa Barbara.

In a dozen luminous stories, Walker, an award-winning author, brings readers to the water’s edge, where the known world collides with magic and with the mysterious depths of the human heart.

Here, a pandemic turns children into sea creatures, a woman bakes unusual piecrusts during a natural disaster, and a young man sets off to see the world in a flying coat.

Lyrical and dreamlike, “How to Capture Carbon” navigates the seas of a changing climate and the transformative power of loss — and of love. 

Walker’s journalism, essays and fiction have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, Orion, and The Missouri Review.

She is the author of “National Monuments of the U.S.A.,” a School Library Journal Best Book of 2023, and of the essay collection “Points of Light.”