A Fire and Altadena: Biographical Diffraction and Climate Disaster Loss
Elizabeth McKibben · 2026
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Description
Elizabeth McKibben presents a creative autoethnography, published in 2026, on grief after a climate fire destroyed her family home. In January 2025 the Eaton Fire devastated Altadena, California, killing nineteen people and destroying thousands of structures. McKibben, who had lived in New Zealand for five years, returned to walk the burn scar where her home had stood.
She coins the term biographical diffraction for how a life story refracts through disaster, weaving audio of her footsteps in the debris with sensory vignettes, images, and reflection. Grief appears as something felt in the body and tied to place, and unevenly shared. Cross cultural learning and Indigenous knowledge are weighed carefully, with their limits for a settler writer stated honestly.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Elizabeth McKibben |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 45 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |