Zak Podmore is an award-winning author and journalist who has spent more than a decade writing about water and conservation issues in the western United States. He is the author of two books published by Torrey House Press, Confluence: Navigating the Personal & Political on Rivers of the New West (2019) and Life After Dead Pool: Lake Powell’s Last Days and the Rebirth of the Colorado River (2024). Zak is the recipient of the The Ellen Meloy Fund for Desert Writers award and was the Entrada Institute’s writer-in-residence in 2023. Most recently, Zak was the southern Utah reporter for The Salt Lake Tribune. He lives in Bluff, Utah.