Lindsey J. Smith is a freelance journalist and essayist raised in rural Sonoma County and based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her writing explores how global warming is changing our relationships with the places we love. She is currently writing her first book, to be published in 2026 by University of California Press. The book, a work of narrative journalism and personal essay, surveys climate change in California and explores the complex but hopeful idea of managed retreat as a possible response to wildfire, sea level rise, and coastal erosion. She was a 2022 Brown Handler Writers Resident, and has published work in BBC, Smithsonian, The Verge, Pacific Standard, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco magazine, Undark, and Wild Hope, among others. Lindsey is also the managing editor of DeSmog, a publication committed to reporting on climate denial and disinformation. Previously, she served as the editorial operations and research director at Alta, and the associate editor at San Francisco magazine. In addition to writing, she works as a freelance editor and has taught fact-checking workshops at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.