Series Spotlights

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I. Jeff VanderMeer | II. Margaret Atwood | III. Nathaniel Rich | IV. Emmi Itäranta | V. Kim Stanley Robinson | VI. Ursula K. Le Guin | VII. Ali Smith | VIII. Peter Heller | IX. John Atcheson | X. Jo Marshall (children’s) | XI. Brian Burt | XII. Barbara Kingsolver | XIII. Susan M. Gaines | XIV. Morgan Nyberg | XV. Review and Writing Tips | XVI. Clara Hume | XVII. Paolo Bacigalupi | XVIII. Jaimee Wriston Colbert | XIX. Kathleen Dean Moore | XX. John KixMiller and Team (YA) | XXI. Writers & Big Oil | XXII. Benh Zeitlin and Lucy Alibar | XXIII. Marian Womack |XXIV. Octavia Butler | XXV. Chantal Bilodeau | XXVI. Marissa Slaven (YA) | XXVII. Edan Lepucki (YA) |XXVIII. James Bradley (YA) | XXIX. Ned Tillman (YA) | XXX. D.G. Driver (YA) | XXXI. Brian Adams (YA)

Note that in early 2019, eco-fiction.com, where this series originated, was migrated to Dragonfly.eco. In May 2019, this original series blends with the very similar and already existent World Eco-fiction series–and will continue indefinitely to cover climate/ecological fiction around the world.

This spotlight series is syndicated at Artists and Climate Change, in the “Wild Authors” series.

October 9, 2016  (updated each month)

This series highlights authors who write fiction that deals with global warming. The spotlights are diverse, featuring multiple writing styles and genres. Some spotlights deal with several works by the same author, some perhaps only with one iconic novel, others a conglomerate number of individuals working on a project or a central idea.

Many scholars argue that climate change is now everything change. That writing about it is often not a separate subject or genre because it is so interconnected to all life on the planet. Author Margaret Atwood noted that climate change is “everything change” too. Dragonfly.eco recognizes this concept in totality, that we are now living in the Anthropocene where climate change is entirely ubiquitous in every aspect of life for everyone on Earth. For the purposes of literary study, and because many authors have blazed the trail in bringing climate change into literature, this series exists. These spotlights explore the diversity of storytelling that involves climate change. Yet, I believe that in the future, global warming will be a part of every story; in that sense, this site is an evolutionary and transitory one from this era to whatever lies beyond.

This project has long been in the back of my mind–to spotlight popular authors on this site in order to help readers identify the most notable works in such a large sea/database. I decided to add this spotlight as a series sooner than later because of the recent news about Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement. This nonfiction book of powerful essays by the brilliant writer points out: “The author examines the failures of storytelling, history and politics that have led humanity to its current predicament in the form of today’s climate crisis.” ^[1] In the same interview in The Wire, he states, “I’m looking at the novel as a symptom of a broader imaginative failure.” Authors, however, are tackling climate change in both literary and genre fiction, and in a serious way.

It is possible that Ghosh calling the novel “a symptom of broader imaginative failure” has a parcel of truth, but I want to be a little more positive. Perhaps fiction authors have not yet totally dented the conversation about climate change, but they are starting to. Is Amitav Ghosh correct when he says there is a lack of imaginative response? There is not a lack in storytelling, in the novel, but he also seems to speak of it in terms of journalistic integrity. In Scroll.in he talks about immediate response vs. the larger issue of derangement. The subtitle of the piece, however, is: “Where are the novels, poetry and art about traumatic climate change, asks the acclaimed author.”

This series will spotlight an author every few weeks. There are already hundreds of such authors listed in the database I’ve built, but we should talk about them here. Let’s give these authors credit for telling stories about climate change–they have been for decades. All of them together have built this library of works and have brought climate change into the scope of fiction, through the lens of hope, warning, imagination, horror, and even, at times, humor.

References

1. The Wire. Interview: Amitav Ghosh on the Novels, Commerce and Sociology of Climate Change, by Shreya Ila Anasuya. July 22, 2016.

2. Scroll.in. Even as we are destroying ourselves, we think we are the only things that matter: Amitav Ghosh, by Nayantara Narayanan. July 30, 2016.

3. New Statesman. How global warming has frozen fiction, by Neel Mukherjee. October 4, 2016.

Author: Mary Woodbury

Original publication date: October 9, 2016 – updated  every few weeks to add new spotlighted authors.