Biography

As the effects of climate change become increasingly felt throughout the world, the Irish novelist Paul Murray believes climate worry is “the unavoidable background for being alive in the 21st century.” Climate fiction, or cli-fi for short, is a genre of literature that deals with the impact of climate change on the earth and on society head-on, by animating it through characters living through these uncertain times.

Many stories within cli-fi, however, such as those in the nascent subgenre of solarpunk, choose to promote solutions to the climate crisis alongside warnings about the effects of climate change. These stories help envision a path forward, and in the process, offer hope to many readers. In this course, we will investigate a variety of writers concerned with climate change and its solutions, including Bill McKibben’s non-fiction, a selection of stories from Kim Stanley Robinson, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Octavia Butler, and Becky Chambers’s novella, A Psalm for the Wild-Built.