Making art about climate is useful in that it reaches a part of the brain that science does not. And climate fiction as a genre gives us a way to get the climate conversation started. Better yet, cli-fi that focuses on solutions might actually help us find a way forward.
Tory Stephens is the New England Network Weaver at Fix, the Grist Solutions Lab. On this episode of Reversing Climate Change, Tory joins Ross and cohost Jess Miles to discuss the launch of his team’s new climate fiction contest, Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors and explain what differentiates his team’s writing contest from others of its kind.
Tory offers insight around climate fiction and the subgenres of solarpunk and hopepunk, challenging writers to create intersectional, solutions-focused work. Listen in for an overview of Imagine 2200’s submission guidelines and learn how fiction might offer a pathway out of the climate crisis.
More from the show
Ad-free episodes and other benefits come with a paid subscription.
Carbon Removal Newsroom, the news show that ran alongside this one, is over. Its episodes are still up, on the feed Climate Workers Anonymous now uses.
Carbon Removal Memes is still going.
Resources
Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors
‘We’re Launching a Fiction Contest’ on Grist
The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
‘Hopepunk, the Latest Storytelling Trend, Is All About Weaponized Optimism’ in Vox
Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor
A Conspiracy of Stars by Olivia A. Cole
Jess Miles on Reversing Climate Change S2EP12
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hello and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change podcast. I’m Ross Kenyon. I am the creative editor at Nori, the carbon removal marketplace. Today I’m bringing on a new co-host, a podcast alumna, patron at Nori’s Patreon, a writer, recent MFA grad in creative writing, Jess Miles. How are you?
Jess Miles: I’m great, especially after that introduction. I’m excited to be here and thank you for having me.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I’m happy to have you back. You’re the CliFi person that I lean on all the time when I need some extra intel, some backup. And you’re here to provide backup because we saw a very interesting announcement coming. To tell us about this project is Tori Stevens, the New England network weaver at Fix Grist Solutions Lab. Hey, Tori.
Tory Stephens: Hey, thanks for having me. This is great.
Ross Kenyon: We’re so happy to have you. Why don’t you kick us off by telling us about this Imagine 2200? Which, by the way, is that how you say it? 2200?
Tory Stephens: Yeah, 2200 for sure. I can definitely talk about that. So as you mentioned before, I’m at Gris and I work at Fix the Solutions Lab there. And we hatched this idea, or at least with a group of climate solution focused individuals in New England. So for Gris, typically I have in what I do normally is I’m their network weaver. And I’ve been pulling together all these folks from New England to talk about climate solutions and bright spots and things that are happening in New England. And when we were convening with these groups, We were like, hey, what are some exciting things that Grist or Fix can get involved in that would help the public understand the climate crisis, some of the hopeful solutions to get out of this?
And someone brought up the idea of a climate fiction initiative. We workshopped that with that group and with another group of climate solution folks again. And eventually we decided, let’s do this thing. And so now we’ve launched Imagine 2200 Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors. And the whole focus of this is to Grow the genre in a way that pulls in more voices. So I’m interested in talking about that today and digging into it.
Jess Miles: I think all of that sounds great. And I’ve been a follower of Grist for a long time. And I primarily know Grist as an environmental journalism and environmental justice journalism outlet. And so I guess my first question would be, why climate fiction in particular? Especially given there are other literary outlets who do ask for environmental climate fiction, why should writers apply to Grist’s contest specifically?
Tory Stephens: Yeah, that’s a good question. So... I think the design of it is really exciting. So just to put that out there, we are asking for intersectional climate solution focused cli-fi, which is a lot to say. And basically what we’re trying to do is we want to grow the genre, not just because it’s a fun and exciting thing. But when we were workshopping this with individuals, we had this visioning session that brought out all these different aspects of What could be the pathway forward? And we noticed that there’s multiple pathways. And so fiction or science fiction or cli-fi, because there’s this world-building aspect and you’re dreaming of a future that you want, there is a lot of place to play in.
We are pushing this because we actually believe that fiction can offer a pathway for us to get out of this climate crisis. It’s not the only thing. Yes, we’re going to need the technologies that are out there, the renewables and changes in lifestyle and power dynamics. But fiction can offer up like a way to see how we get there.
Ross Kenyon: So I think making more art about climate is certainly helpful. I think it hits a part of the brain that science does not. That’s right. I always come back to this over and over. There’s a story from I think I got it from Brian Green in trying to publish The Elegant Universe. You need to minimize the math if you want to tell this story and get people to read it and care about it. And maybe something parallels happening for cli-fi, climate fiction. One thing that you said, though, that stands out to me that I would like a little bit more clarification on is the intersectional component here.
It might be worth unpacking a bit. The basics of what intersectionality is and how it might interact with climate change.
Tory Stephens: Yeah, the way that we’re showing up and, you know, putting that call out there that these stories, the submitted stories are intersectional is that we understand that folks have layers to them, you know. So let me back up and kind of issue like a problem statement that we see in climate fiction, which is that we think that it’s the world building’s great. We think that the stories are dynamic. They’re even, you know, just really interesting, but they’re falling short. When it comes to characters, you know, and you know, I’m painting a broad brush, but you know, there’s a lot of straight and narrow characters.
And so we want characters to show up that have layered parts of themselves. So intersectionality tells us that. We have a society where there’s power dynamics and there’s different layering of oppressions depending on your identity. We would love for folks to not just be diverse, but for them to be also diverse. So, diverse in a multitude of ways. So, that could be their class. That could be their race. And those two things combined. So, you could have like an Indian queer person as a character in this, you know, really exciting story.
Yeah. The reason that’s important is not just because of diversity. That’s important because, you know, well, it’s important because of diversity, but it’s also important because this visioning piece that I was talking about, about seeing a future. There’s folks that look like and there’s a queer Indian person out there that wants to see themselves in the stories and is fighting for this future right now. And there’s sort of like an erasure that can happen in the genre. I have to say that...
Jess Miles: That means a lot to me just as a reader and as a mixed race indigenous kid. I think bringing more diverse voices to the environmental space and inside of that, the cli-fi genre is really important because environmental literature, both fiction and nonfiction can be somewhat homogeneous as you touched on a little bit earlier. One of my questions, well, I have questions. My first question, Tori, is what is your favorite cli-fi book or what are you currently reading? And then I think it’s also important if you can distinguish for listeners the difference between cli-fi and then the sub-genres of hope punk and solar punk.
Tory Stephens: Yeah, for sure. Right now, I am reading Ministry of the Future, and I am digging it. I’m about 75% of the way into the book. I would recommend it. I think it’s expansive, and it is global, which I do like, which is quite different than some of the other stories that I’ve read. And I think some of the characters are dynamic, to some degree intersectional, but I am digging the story. So the way is that I think it’s easier. Let me talk about CliFi and Solarpunk. I actually think that those two like are layered or some interchangeable to some degree.
Sometimes they’re very similar. And that they’re both very hopeful and focused on climate solutions. And so sometimes those, they can be interchangeable. And I’m not really sure if I can distinguish them that much other than that, you know, cli-fi is It has often been about a doomsday scenario or something apocalyptic. With solar punk, sorry, it is just more hopeful, more utopian, typically. I’m not someone who’s read a ton of solar punk, but it’s one of the genres we’re asking to show up in this contest. We’ve made particular appeals to particular communities and literary traditions, and solar punk is one of them.
There was a second part of your question, but I lost it.
Jess Miles: Oh, no, I think you answered it. I was just trying to make the distinction between cli-fi and then the subgenres of solar punk and hope punk. And I would agree that climate fiction and solar punk can go. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Tory Stephens: Gotcha, gotcha. And the part that I forgot was Hope Punk, which is like, you know, a budding genre. You know, we latched on to that. I don’t think it’s as well defined as like solar punk. But, you know, people are playing in that space. And I remember Vox a while ago did a breakdown on it. So I think that’s helpful to being like, hey, we made it for the folks that are like Hope Punk enthusiasts. So the one thing that we are trying to do with this particular... Initiative is that we want to be playing in the space of hope, but we’re not being...
You know, overly rosy about the situation that we’re in right now that, you know, we just didn’t want to land with dystopian stories. We want to figure out how to get to a green, clean and just future. And so we’re asking for stories that are hopeful, but we understand that there’s going to, we want there to be conflict and these kind of like epic soap opera, like, or space opera kind of style things that can happen. So yeah, landing...
Unknown speaker: I love the idea of soap operas and space operas, although the landing page for the contest does say not to veer too far into Star Wars.
Tory Stephens: Yeah, you know, we like, at Grist, we like to, you know, play with words and we have that kind of, you know, we’re just, we play with words. So, you know, we’re interested in good stories.
Ross Kenyon: I think that’s the first space opera I think of. Is that where you’re getting addressed? Yeah. Yeah.
Tory Stephens: Yeah. And I’m a Star Wars fan, to be clear. I’m not dogging Star Wars. Not trying to take that heat for no reason when I like it.
Ross Kenyon: It’s funny that we seized upon this because the taxonomy of all these genres is often grounds for fighting. And I remember being in a long car ride once and someone described Star Wars as sci-fi. And it was almost like the record scratch. I was like, that’s fantasy, okay? There’s magic involved. The Force is magic. That’s not science. That doesn’t belong here. That’s Lord of the Rings, basically.
Jess Miles: I love the passion behind that.
Tory Stephens: You bring up an interesting thing that we were wrangling with, which is, you know, we’re focused on climate solutions. And, you know, at Grist, it’s like, you know, we’re dealing, the news side of the organization is dealing with, you know, the everyday events and then opportunities. We’re dealing with storytelling and we were really debating whether or not we would include stories that included magical realism and things of that nature. And we decided to keep them in because a lot of other cultures use that as their medium to tell stories. And so we really didn’t want to like lock it like this is an international contest.
And so we did have that debate and we landed that we’re going to allow it as long as there’s like some sort of a We’ll have to see once we read and inspect the stories, but we are allowing it so that we can review those sort of stories.
Jess Miles: I know just as a reader, I would definitely like to see magical realism, environmental stories. I brought this up with Ross in a previous conversation, but I recently read a story by Nnedi Okorafor. Okay. And there’s a lot of magical realism in... But it also has environmental aspects to it as well. And I think that is a really interesting direction for environmental fiction to go.
Tory Stephens: Yeah, I mean, today, just to preview a call I had, which is a funny way to talk about this, but someone called us from Indonesia, and they were talking about a story where they incorporated, you know, mythical, like, you know, gods from You know, like Indonesian kind of tradition and history and climate solutions. And I thought that would be really cool. Like, so again, really want to be inclusive here and respectful of different people’s cultures and the way they storytell. And so after we had that discussion, I was really glad that the team decided to land on including stories that Because it is really difficult when you’re like a climate solution to reality science based place.
And you’re saying like, in, you know, to get to the future, it’s okay to include magical realism, but we understand that is just a, an avenue to be able to talk about these things that we care about.
Jess Miles: Sure. And I would like to pivot a little bit just towards more of the nuts and bolts of the contest because I was looking on your submittable page and I saw that you do not accept simultaneous submissions for this contest. So as someone who is applying for literary contests and stuff, I was wondering what Grist’s turnaround time was expected to be for submissions. Is it going to be the standard three months, longer, shorter? Mm-hmm.
Tory Stephens: Yeah, so we’re just under three months. So the stories themselves, the submission deadline for everyone listening that’s interested is April 12th at midnight or 1159. And We then go into the reader phase. And I would like people to know that we have paid readers, which I think is important. So these stories are really going to be... There’s going to be two readers and one managing editor looking through and discussing and scoring these stories, which I think is a real value. There’s not volunteers. We’ve made an investment here at Grist to just the quality piece, we’re hoping is better because of that.
And so... April 12th, submissions close, and then there is the reader phase, which is happening for about two months. And then we hand it off to the judges, and they’ll make the winning choices based on a selection that the readers give to them around, and they’ll have a turnaround. So it’s like it’s just under three months. It’s like about two months and two and a half weeks. So... I don’t know if that’s like the answer you wanted to hear or if our listeners wanted to hear. Your listeners, sorry.
Jess Miles: Yeah, no, I think that’s great. Definitely answers my question. Thanks.
Ross Kenyon: How many pages or word count? What are some of the logistical features of the pieces you’re soliciting that we may not have covered yet, Tori?
Tory Stephens: Yeah, for sure. So submissions are open now. You can submit through our submittable portal. I’m sure Ross will put in the notes for this episode, you know, the link so that folks can check out the site post that we put out there. And the submissions close on April 12th. We’re definitely looking for short stories. And so that link that we’ve set is there’s a minimum of 3000 words and a maximum of 5000 words. And, you know, some of the things I’ve been previewing and discussing in this talk or conversation are some of the things we’ll be looking for.
You know, how hopeful it is. Is it to have climate solutions embedded in the story? Are the characters like multi-layered and dynamic? You know, things of that nature. There’s a little bit more to it. We didn’t talk about this at all, but some of the early inspiration for this was Afrofuturism. And so we’re making a direct call and appeal to folks that play in that space to consider playing in the climate fiction space. We want that community to show up right in this space and submit to the contest.
Ross Kenyon: I think we spoke a little bit about this, Tori, but has that genre been, has it had new life breathe into it since Black Panther? Is there a lot of work coming out of Afrofuturism right now?
Tory Stephens: There’s a ton of work coming out of there. I don’t know if I can credit it to the popularity of Black Panther. I think there’s more interest in the genre overall. The greats in the genre right now aren’t seeing the mainstream acclaim and success. They’re seeing more attention, but nothing that I thought it was going to... In a way, in the background, the genre is exploding. But the folks that paved the path, I don’t think they’re catching the wind of that explosion. It’s kind of been... Yeah, it’s been monopolized to some degree by Disney at this point.
And again, that’s no dig, I would say, at Disney because certainly it’s really exciting that they ran with this story and produced a movie as good as Black Panther.
Ross Kenyon: Well, more to say on that, certainly. Let’s start wrapping it up. I have links to all these things in the show notes. If you’d like to participate, please be out there making climate art. If this is your inclination, we need it. We need you. Please be doing it. It’s one of the reasons I tapped you on the shoulder to come help me out on this, Jess. I’m really happy you spent so much of your time thinking creatively about climate change. So thank you for co-hosting it with me.
Jess Miles: Yeah, of course. This was a really fun episode. Interesting discussion.
Tory Stephens: Yeah, thank you guys. I appreciate it. Nice to meet you and this has been great.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, it’s been great for me too. And I’m sure we’ll have you or your colleagues back on Tori to catch us up with the winners and talk about this once it comes out. That’ll be a lot of fun too. And maybe as one brief little fun thing to do as a sign off, maybe each of you could recommend a book that a reader might enjoy reading.
Tory Stephens: I don’t know if anyone’s read this. It’s kind of a YA book. It is Conspiracy of Stars. It’s a really good science fiction book with a hint of cli-fi. Yeah, I would recommend it. How about you, Jess?
Jess Miles: Oh, gosh. You’ll have to come back to me maybe when Tori comes back on the show because I don’t have a recommendation at the moment.
Ross Kenyon: You’re such a book name dropper too, not a one.
Jess Miles: Not one that would fit into Clify, but I’ll do my reading and I’ll catch up.
Ross Kenyon: Okay. I think I would second your suggestion earlier, Tori, of Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future, which I just read. And Kim Stanley Robinson himself will be on the show talking about it. I think it’s our longest podcast ever. It goes for like two hours or nearly so. We had a lot of fun with it. So yeah, read this stuff, write this stuff. Thanks both of you for being here.
Tory Stephens: Yeah, thank you. This has been fun.
Ross Kenyon: Thank you so much for listening. If you like the show, please rate and review it in Apple Podcasts and or Stitcher. It really helps us a lot to get this content to a wider audience. If you think what we’re doing is useful, interesting, fun, hopefully all three, we’d certainly appreciate your rating and review. You can keep up We are also now on Patreon at patreon.com slash noripodcasts if you’d like more content, engagement, and community. And thank you so much for your support.
