I was recently invited to participate in a number of panels for WriteHive 2022, an online conference for writers. It has been a great honor chatting with authors like Chelsea Lockhart (also the CEO of Written in Melanin), fellow biologist and clifi writer Patricia Tavormina, and memoirist Yujin Kim. Always interesting to pick the brains of such a diverse group of people who all love writing.
If you have the time and are curious, do check them out (links at the bottom).
The panel that I enjoyed the most, however, was a one-on-one with the charismatic and eloquent Jerusha René, fellow writer and CEO of WriteHive. We talked climate fiction.
I’m writing these lines just a few days after my city, Copenhagen, broke a nearly 50-year old heat record. It hasn’t been the only city that has broken heat records this summer. Parts of Italy went on a state of emergency and London is shutting down. Greece experienced a 750% increase in forest fires since the previous year.
The thing about fiction is that you can write about anything and, if you coat it in a good story, it will stay with people. I used to think it was climate change deniers that were holding us back and it was them I was hoping clifi could reach to.
It’s inertia that will do us in. Governments promising to cut fossil fuel emissions while awarding increasing incentives to dig for oil. Corporations being lazy because they can’t see beyond the next quarter’s results. I mean, look at this.
Climate fiction will become more and more important as we witness a true apocalyptic scenario unfolding before our eyes. It is my hope that this will spur people into action. Make them demand change from their governments and boycott those industries that continue leading us to a disaster we cannot recover from.
Please, if you value your existence, take action. Recycling and taking public transportation will not cut it anymore. We need big scale drastic action now.
Write to your politicians. Demand action. Form grass-roots organizations and campaign. Do Not. Give. Your Money. To Polluters.
Links to the other panels;
EA Mylonas Author 