As the places and people most affected by the climate change crisis face existential threat, freeing environmental writing from the gaze of the “Lone Enraptured Male” (London Review of Books) is crucial. A panel of writers, journalists, and climate change activists will consider the formal, structural elements environmental writers can bring to storytelling, how to handle or tell stories that support political stances, and examine the stories out there that can foster a better understanding of our environmental crisis.
Featuring Kerri Arsenault, Meehan Crist, Bathsheba Demuth, John Freeman, Emily Raboteau, and Meera Subramanian.
Presented in collaboration with Orion Magazine and the National Book Critics Circle as part of the Brooklyn Book Festival’s Bookends series.
Recommended Titles
Kerri Arsenault
- The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
- The Undying: A Meditation on Modern Illness by Anne Boyer
- Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
- Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor by Rob Nixon
- The Peregrine by JA Baker
- The Control of Nature by John McPhee
- Globalization: The Human Consequence by Zygmunt Bauman
- Dictionary of the Undoing by John Freeman
- The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
- Floating Coast by Bathsheba Demuth
Meehan Crist
- Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
- Women, Race & Class by Angela Butler
- Rising by Elizabeth Rush
- Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Capitalism in the Web of Life by Jason Moore
Bathsheba Demuth
- Under Nushagak Bluff by Mia Heavener
- Trace by Lauret Savoy
- Fathoms by Rebecca Giggs
- The Right to Be Cold by Sheila Watt-Cloutie
- The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Tsing
John Freeman
- Bangkok Waits for Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad
- Barkskins by Annie Proulx
- Petals of Blood by Ngugi wa Thiong’o
- Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy
- End of Nature by Bill McKibben
- The Great Derangement by Amitav Ghosh
- Clare of the Sea Light by Edwidge Danticat
- Men of the Sun by Ghassan Kanafani
- Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins
- On Time and Water by Andri Snaer Magnasson
- Casting Deep Shade by CD Wright
- Oil on Water by Helon Habila
- Maddaddam Trilogy by Margaret Atwood
- Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
Emily Raboteau
- Learning to Die in the Anthropocene by Roy Scranton
- Mill Town by Kerri Arsenault
- Weather by Jenny Offill
- Bangkok Wakes to Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad
- The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
- Veins of the Ocean by Patricia Engel
- Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
- Why We Swim by Bonnie Tsui
- World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatahil
- Postcolonial Love Poem: Poems by Natalie Diaz
Meera Subramanian
- Thunder & Lightning by Lauren Redniss
- Climate Changed by Philippe Squarzoni
- Late Migrations by Margaret Renkl
- The Overstory by Richard Powers
- Reckoning: Journalism’s Limits and Possibilities by Candis Callion & Mary Lynn Young
- Encyclical on Climate Change by Pope Francis
- The Great Derangement by Amitav Ghosh
- Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh
