WestportREADS 2026 Keynote Conversation: Author Eiren Caffall on 'All the Water in the World'

Event Details

Award-winning author Eiren Caffall joins the Westport community for a keynote conversation on the 2026 WestportREADS selection, All the Water in the World, a literary thriller set partly on the roof of New York’s Museum of Natural History in a flooded future — and a masterful story of a family fighting to not be drowned by a changing world.

Caffall will be in conversation with Catherine Shen, host of Connecticut Public’s morning talk show and podcast, Where We Live.

Why You Should Come

WestportREADS is designed to deepen our community’s engagement in literature and bring us together over the common bond of a shared book and a love of reading.

Throughout January and February, there will be events and programs centered on All the Water in the World, book discussions, celebrations, and much more. It is a chance to not only read a great book but to engage with the community, meet new people, and celebrate reading.

About All the Water in the World

All the Water in the World is told in the voice of a girl gifted with a deep feeling for water. In the years after the glaciers melt, Nonie, her older sister, and her parents and their researcher friends have stayed behind in an almost deserted New York City, creating a settlement on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History. The rule: Take from the exhibits only in dire need. They hunt and grow their food in Central Park as they work to save the collections of human history and science. When a superstorm breaches the city’s flood walls, Nonie and her family must escape north on the Hudson. They carry with them a book that holds their records of the lost collections. Racing on the swollen river toward what may be safety, they encounter communities that have adapted in very different and sometimes frightening ways to the new reality. But they are determined to find a way to make a new world that honors all they’ve saved.

Inspired by the stories of the curators in Iraq and Leningrad who worked to protect their collections from war, All the Water in the World is both a meditation on what we save from collapse and an adventure story ― with danger, storms, and a fight for survival. In the spirit of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Parable of the Sower, this wild journey offers the hope that what matters most ― love and work, community, and knowledge ― will survive.

"When the world collapses, will our love for each other? Eiren Caffall answers the hard questions in this luminous novel. All the Water in the World is a masterful story of a family fighting to not be drowned by a changing world. Each sentence is a treasure. Read this and be changed." — Rene Denfeld, best-selling author of The Child Finder and Sleeping Giants

About Eiren Caffall

Caffall is an author and musician based in Chicago. Her writing on loss and nature, oceans, and extinction has appeared in Orion, The Writer’s Digest, Guernica, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, Al Jazeera, The Rumpus, and the anthology Elementals: Volume IV: Fire (The Center for Humans and Nature, 2024). She has received a 2023 Whiting Award in Creative Nonfiction, a Social Justice News Nexus fellowship, and residencies at the Banff Centre, Millay Colony, MacDowell Colony (waitlisted), Hedgebrook, and Ragdale.

She is the author of the memoir The Mourner’s Bestiary (Row House Publishing, 2024) and the novel All the Water in the World (St. Martin’s Press, 2025).

About Catherine Shen

Shen is the host of Connecticut Public’s morning talk show and podcast, Where We Live, which focuses on going beyond the headlines to bring in meaningful conversations that put Connecticut in context.

Shen started her journalism career in the Los Angeles fashion scene and subsequently worked as a freelance reporter for several newspapers, breaking stories about local government, law enforcement, and education. After a successful stint out west, she moved to the East Coast and covered a mix of academic news, nonprofit projects, and human feature stories both off and on camera in New Jersey, before moving to Connecticut and reporting for the New Britain Herald. There, she won several Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists awards for her coverage on the COVID-19 pandemic, social justice movements, and police accountability.

Shen joined Connecticut Public's newsroom in 2021, covering a variety of stories like student mental health, childcare shortages, and teacher burnout. Before her current position, Shen was Connecticut Public’s education reporter for just over a year.

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WestportREADS is funded by the estate of Jerry A. Tishman.

All the Water in the World: A Reader's Guide for WestportREADS 2026
Climate Change 
Museum Passes