Ana Filomena Amaral
Ana Filomena Amaral is a Portuguese writer born in Avintes, Oporto, and now lives in Lousã.
She earned a master’s in contemporary economic and social history from the University of
Coimbra, and a specialization in documentary sciences. She is an experienced interpreter and
translator in several European languages, particularly German. The author works for the Minister of Education in Coimbra. She has already published five novels in Portugal and Vaulted Home is one of them. She has also published historical monographies, including her master’s thesis about the Portuguese First Minister Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo.
N.R. Baker
Niki Baker is an explorer. She doesn’t have Sherpas or a frozen moustache, she’s just got incurable wanderlust. Whether it’s the mountains of Albania, the islands of Indonesia or the jungles of Guatemala, she has always been happiest when she’s far off the beaten track. Niki also loves exploring the power of words and spent much of her childhood up a tree in Somerset with her head in a book, either lost in the worlds created by authors like C.S. Lewis, or writing truly awful tales of her own. Since then she has earned recognition for her travel writing, poetry, lyrics, flash fiction and short stories. She now lives in rural France with her soulmate, who is also a writer. Niki’s debut novel, the eco-thriller ’10:59′, was published in 2020.
J. Ekstam
Jane Ekstam, born in Cambridge, England, and now living in Sweden, is a professor of English literature at Østfold University College, Norway. During her long career in higher education, in both Sweden and Norway, she has published books, chapters and articles on a range of works of English literature, aspects of teacher education, and academic writing for undergraduates and postgraduates.
When Jane is not writing her trilogy on climate change – ‘Katja’s World Game’, she’s supervising graduate students, walking through the forests near her home in Trollhättan, Sweden, or playing with her grandchildren! She loves trees, her husband, her three grown-up daughters, and novels about climate change – especially those that give us hope.
Like my protagonist, Katja, I am a vegan, who struggled at first to forget the delights of mature cheddar cheese, Devon clotted cream, and butter shortbread. We have sold our car, grow our own vegetables (without the use of modern fertilisers), and generally try to avoid plastic. My husband and I also join climate strikes in different Swedish towns and cities.
The first novel in my trilogy, Katja’s World Game: The Game Begins, was published at the end of May (2022). The second and third novels will not be far behind! For more information, please see www.katjasworldgame.com.
Jean-Marc Ligny
Born in 1956 in Paris. Pursues high school studies that lead him to the baccalaureate, but no further. Very early plunged into science fiction (from the age of 8!), devotes himself to writing in this field from 1976, after unsuccessful musical attempts (as a rock guitarist). Publishes his first short story in 1978 with Denoël, in Philippe Curval’s anthology Futurs au Présent. His first novel, Temps Blancs, published the following year, was noticed by the critics and earned him a passage in Apostrophes (a famous literary TV show at that time). Decided to devote himself to writing full time when he “emigrated” to Brittany in 1985. Nevertheless, he worked for a few years (part-time) on a local editorial staff for a regional daily newspaper, Le Télégramme. After spending ten years in the Forez Mountains, returned in 2015 to live in Brittany (Morbihan) where he works full-time as a writer and translator. He has written about fifty short stories and forty novels, in many fields covered by science fiction and fantasy, including about fifteen for youth (10-15 years), which lead him to intervene in schools. He has also produced two international anthologies (one masculine and one feminine) on the theme of love, translated and published in Italy. He draws his inspiration from music (Furia!, La Mort Peut Danser), ethnology (Yurlunggur, Yoro Si), esotericism (Les Voleurs de rêves), history (La Mort Peut Danser) and ecology, especially climate change (AquaTM, Exodes, Semences, Alliances). He is also interested in fantasy (Yoro Si, Les Ailes noires de la nuit), cyberpunk (Cyberkiller, Inner City, Slum City), space-opera (Les oiseaux de lumière), or more political fields (Jihad, Aqua™). He also wrote some detective novels. Two trips to Burkina Faso and one to Ireland provided the setting for two of his major works: Yoro Si and La Mort peut danser. In the field of fantastic/horror, seeks an original approach to the genre, based on myths and legends of current and past civilizations… but does not neglect contemporary urban fantasy (La maison aux démons, Mal-morts). Is the winner of the main French prizes in the field of science-fiction: the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire in 1997 for Inner City (J’ai Lu), the Rosny Aîné prize in 1999 for Jihad (Denoël / J’ai Lu) and in 2007 for Aqua™ (L’Atalante), the Tour Eiffel prize in 2001 for Les oiseaux de lumière (J’ai Lu), the Julia Verlanger Prize (endowed by the Fondation de France) in 2007 for Aqua™ – this last novel was published in Germany and China – and finally the European Utopian Prize in 2013 for Exodes (L’Atalante). Since the early 2000s, he has devoted most of his fiction to climate change and its social and environmental consequences: 4 novels have been published on this subject (Aqua™, Exodes, Semences, Alliances) as well as a dozen short stories.
Liz Jensen
Liz Jensen’s work spans comedy, cli-fi, historical fiction, psychological suspense drama and creative non-fiction. She is the author of eight acclaimed novels, including the Hollywood-adapted The Ninth Life of Louis Drax and the climate thrillers The Rapture and The Uninvited. Her work has been translated into over 20 languages and nominated three times for the Orange Prize (now the Women’s Prize for Fiction) and shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Award. For the last 25 years she has regularly taught creative writing at the Arvon Foundation and mentored many writers of fiction and non-fiction. Her most recent book, the grief memoir Your Wild and Precious Life is published in the UK by Canongate Books. She is the co-founder of the literature action group XR Writers Rebel and founder of the Rebel Library. She lives in Copenhagen.
Uwe Laub
German bestseller author Uwe Laub was born in 1971. After graduation in 1991 he worked as a broker at the German stock exchange before he started building up his own business. Today Uwe Laub is married and has a grown-up daughter. He lives in Munich, Germany and Fort Myers, Florida – together with his wife and dog.
Laubs novel „STORM“ has been published by PenguinRandomhouse Germany in 2018. It hit German SPIEGEL-Bestseller-List Top14, was elected one of „Ten novels worth reading in 2018“ by a major TV broadcaster (ZDF) and it was nominated “Best German novel 2019” by German Fantasy Society. As of today it has been translated into several languages. In the US it was published on June 1st 2024.
Laub has written a total of five novels to date, all of which can be classified as climate fiction. For his novels, Laub researches intensively on topics such as the environment and nature.
Read our interview with Cara
Cara Hoffman
Cara Hoffman is the author of Running, a New York Times Editor’s Choice, an Esquire Magazine Best Book of 2017, and an Autostraddle Best Queer and Feminist Book of 2017. She first received national attention in 2011 with the publication of So Much Pretty which sparked a national dialogue on violence and retribution and was named Best Suspense Novel of the year by the New York Times Book Review.
Her second novel, Be Safe I Love You, was nominated for a Folio Prize, named one of the Five Best Modern War Novels by the Telegraph UK, and won a Sundance Institute Global Film Making Award.
Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, The Paris Review, Bookforum, Rolling Stone, Salon and NPR and she has been a visiting writer at Columbia, St. John’s and Oxford University. She is the recipient of a number of awards and accolades including a MacDowell Fellowship, an Edward Albee Fellowship, and a Cill Rialaig Fellowshp. She is the author of the classic children’s novel Bernard Pepperlin.
She currently lives in Manhattan and Athens, Greece with Marc Lepson and is at work on her fourth novel.
Meltea Keller
Meltea Keller (Martina Biscarini Baldi) is a genderfluid (she/they; lei/ləi) author, translator, and musician from Tuscany, based in Bologna since 2004. She holds degrees in Cinema Studies (University of Bologna), Filmmaking (Kingston-upon-Thames), and Foreign Languages and Literatures (University of Ferrara), where her comparative literature thesis explored the rise of cli-fi in the Anglophone world and its resistance in Italy.
A neurodivergent eco-activist, she writes for Ecologica and Leitmovie, co-created the eco-cultural podcasts Greencast and Ecologicast, and performs as the lead singer of the all-female alt-rock band Mumble Rumble. Her works include Fragili Futuri (KaiFab, 2023), a collection of eco-magical realist stories, as well as biographies of Mannarino, Rancore, and Måneskin, and the Italian translation of Harpo Speaks by Harpo Marx.
Chioma Okereke
Chioma Okereke is a Nigeria-born author, who grew up in London and studied law at UCL. She started her writing career as a performance poet before turning her hand to prose.
Her debut novel, Bitter Leaf (Virago), was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize – Africa Best First Book. Her short story, Trompette De La Mort, received First Runner Up of the inaugural Costa Short Story Award and her work was included in the Virago is 40 anthology.
A coming-of-age story set in the real settlement of Makoko, Lagos, her upcoming novel, Water Baby (Quercus, April 2024) portrays the pressures on a young woman trying to escape the confines of her community and explores wider societal issues including climate change, digitalisation, gentrification, and resettlement.
Chioma set up Makoko Pearls to raise funds for the inhabitants of the informal settlement of Makoko, most of whom are living without access to basic social amenities. Get involved at makokopearls.org.
As a keen traveller, globetrotting has greatly influenced Chioma’s storytelling. Passionate about universal stories and challenging the stereotypes surrounding writers of African descent, she divides her time between the bustle of London, the hustle of Nigeria and the calm of rural France. Follow her on Instagram, Facebook and sign up to her newsletter at chiomaokereke.com.
Anja Stürzer
Anja Stürzer, born in 1965, studied English and Italian literature in Hamburg and Konstanz with a focus on narrative research. During her studies she wrote articles for Prof. Dietrich Schwanitz’s theater newspaper University Players’ Publications, among others. She then worked as an editor for various specialist magazines, which completely changed her previously more academic writing style. She held Shakespeare seminars and, with essays on The Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter novels, got involved in the polemical debate about the literary value of the two works.
Today she works as an author and freelance editor and occasionally holds workshops and lectures, which sometimes result in academic publications. In addition to the question of what makes a good story or a good film, she is particularly interested in environmental policy issues and the topic of fantasy.
She is a founding member of the Society for Fantasy Research (GFF) and a member of the Fantasy Authors Network (PAN) and belongs to the writer’s group of the Wetzlar Phantastische Bibliothek. Her non-fiction book Shakespeare. Introduction was published by Oldib Verlag in 2008. For the anthology The Fantastic 6, published in 2010 by Beltz & Gelbert, she wrote a short biography of the Frankenstein author Mary Shelley. Her children’s book Somniavero, a science fiction eco thriller published by Mixtvision in 2011, received the 2012 Young Talent Award from the German Academy for Children’s and Young Adult Literature and was included in the prestigious shortlist ‘White Ravens 2012 of the International Youth Library’. She regularly publishes fantastic short stories in various anthologies.
Anja Stürzer lives with her family, dogs and cats in an eco-house with a natural garden in Hamburg. In her free time, she enjoys being outdoors in nature, preferably off the beaten track. She prefers travelling by train to driving, prefers tea to coffee and regularly listens to the radio
Harriet Springbett
Although Harriet Springbett always wrote stories while growing up in her West Dorset home, she qualified and worked as an engineer. During a Raleigh International expedition in Chile she realised that writing and discovering life were more important to her than engineering. She moved to France in 1995, where she studied French at Pau University and then worked as a project manager, magazine feature writer, translator and TEFL teacher. She now lives in Poitou-Charentes with her French partner and their teenage children. Harriet has written a trilogy of speculative fiction books about the magic of trees, based on legends and the scientific research into tree communication. Tree Magic, Tree Slayer and Tree Sacrifice are published by Impress Books and are suitable for teenagers (15+) and adults. Since her first literary success, aged 10, her short stories and poetry have been published in literary journals and placed in writing competitions, including a shortlisting in the Bath Short Story Award. She leads writing workshops, has judged the Segora international short story competition and blogs about being a writer in France at https://harrietspringbett.wordpress.com
Climate Fiction Writers League 