Charlie Jane Anders
Charlie Jane Anders’ latest novel is The City in the Middle of the Night. She’s also the author of All the Birds in the Sky, which won the Nebula, Crawford and Locus awards, and Choir Boy, which won a Lambda Literary Award. Plus a novella called Rock Manning Goes For Broke and a short story collection called Six Months, Three Days, Five Others. Her short fiction has appeared in Tor.com, Boston Review, Tin House, Conjunctions, the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Wired Magazine, Slate, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Lightspeed, ZYZZYVA, Catamaran Literary Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and tons of anthologies. Her story “Six Months, Three Days” won a Hugo Award, and her story “Don’t Press Charges And I Won’t Sue” won a Theodore Sturgeon Award.
Charlie Jane also organizes the monthly Writers With Drinks reading series, and co-hosts the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct with Annalee Newitz.
Austin Aslan
Austin Aslan’s debut novel, The Islands at the End of the World, was named a Best Book of 2014 by Kirkus Reviews. It was ranked by The Guardian as a top-ten climate fiction read, and is listed by BookRiot as a top 100 must-read book in the category of young adult science fiction. His latest novel from HarperCollins is TURBO Racers: Trailblazer.
Austin earned a master’s degree in tropical conservation biology at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. His research on rare Hawaiian plants located on the high slopes of Mauna Loa won him a pair of destroyed hiking boots, a tattered rain jacket, and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. He has lived in deserts, jungles, and cloud forests. He has traveled to all seven continents, and is fluent in Penguin and several dialects of Cave Bat. When he’s not busy child-raising, you can often find him stargazing. Austin lives with his family in the snowy mountains of northern Arizona, a stone’s throw away from the edge of the Grand Canyon.
Stephanie Becker
Stephanie Becker, an award-winning wildlife and nature photographer based in the San Francisco Bay Area, is a sixth-generation Californian and certified naturalist. Her early advocacy for wildlife, including successfully campaigning for deer-crossing signs in her hometown, sparked her passion for raising awareness about coexistence with nature. Through her work, she aims to inspire young readers to embrace empathy, friendship, and environmental stewardship, fostering a deeper connection with the natural world.
Anna Burke
Raised in Upstate New York, Anna Burke graduated from Smith College in 2012 with a B. A. in English Literature and Studio Art. She was the inaugural recipient of the Sandra Moran Scholarship for the Golden Crown Literary Society’s Writing Academy.
Anna has lived all along the Eastern seaboard, but wrote her debut novel, the high seas adventure Compass Rose (2018), while living on a small island in the West Indies. She suspects this explains her sudden interest in dystopian lesbian pirates.
When she is not writing fiction, Anna is an overly ambitious gardener and freelance writer. She and her wife live with their two dogs and the occasional four-legged guest.
D.S.G. Burke
D.S.G. Burke has a wary fascination with living in a dystopian version of the future, fueling her work on climate solutions—despite a troublesome fondness for air travel. After many formative years in the Pacific Northwest, she now lives in New York City. Several of her eco-flavored stories have appeared in literary journals. Mean Higher High Water, her debut novel, is forthcoming from Vine Leaves Press in January 2026.
Paolo Bacigalupi
Paolo Bacigalupi’s writing has appeared in WIRED Magazine, High Country News, Salon.com, OnEarth Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. His short fiction been anthologized in various “Year’s Best” collections of short science fiction and fantasy, nominated for three Nebula Awards, four Hugo Awards, and won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best science fiction short story of the year. His short story collection PUMP SIX AND OTHER STORIES was a 2008 Locus Award winner for Best Collection and also named a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly
His debut novel THE WINDUP GIRL was named by TIME Magazine as one of the ten best novels of 2009, and also won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Compton Crook, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards. Internationally, it has won the Seiun Award (Japan), The Ignotus Award (Spain), The Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis (Germany), and the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire (France).
His debut young adult novel, SHIP BREAKER, was a Micheal L. Printz Award Winner, and a National Book Award Finalist, and its sequel, THE DROWNED CITIES, was a 2012 Kirkus Reviews Best of YA Book, A 2012 VOYA Perfect Ten Book, and 2012 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist.
He has also written ZOMBIE BASEBALL BEATDOWN for middle-grade children, about zombies, baseball, and, of all things, meatpacking plants. Another novel for teens, THE DOUBT FACTORY, a contemporary thriller about public relations and the product defense industry was a both an Edgar Award and Locus Award Finalist.
His latest novel for adults is The New York Times Bestseller THE WATER KNIFE, a near-future thriller about climate change and drought in the southwestern United States.
Clyde Boyer
The co-founder of TEG, Clyde Boyer is a social entrepreneur and former farm kid who has spent his life working with underserved youth and migrant populations, and building learning hubs in Africa and Latin America. He is also a Biomimicry student and frequent public speaker and an advisory board member of SXSW EDU. A practicing Biomimic, he believes nature is the best teacher in solving many of our world’s issues.
Tobias S. Buckell
Born in the Caribbean, Tobias S. Buckell is a New York Times Bestselling and World Fantasy Award winning author. His novels and almost one hundred stories have been translated into nineteen different languages. He has been nominated for the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, World Fantasy Award, and Astounding Award for Best New Science Fiction Author. He currently lives in Ohio.
Joel Burcat
Joel Burcat is an award-winning author of three environmental legal thrillers: Drink to Every Beast (about illegal dumping of toxic waste), Amid Rage (about a coal mine permit battle), and Strange Fire (about a fracking dispute). His most recent book, Reap the Wind, is about three lawyers trying to drive from Houston to Cincinnati in a climate change-induced hurricane.
He has received a number of awards, including the Gold Medal for environmental fiction from Readers’ Favorite for Strange Fire, and as a Finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards for Amid Rage. He has written numerous short stories. Burcat imbues his novels with facts to educate his readers about critical environmental issues while they are being entertained by the story.
Burcat’s books are infused with realism developed over a forty plus year career as an environmental lawyer. Burcat has worked in government as an Assistant Attorney General and in a private law practice. He was selected as the 2019 Lawyer of the Year in Environmental Litigation (for Central PA) by Best Lawyers in America. Among his numerous professional writings, he has edited two significant books on environmental and energy law. He has retired from the practice of law and works full-time as a novelist.
He is an active member of the International Thriller Writers and PennWriters.
Burcat lives in Harrisburg, Pa. with his wife, Gail.
BrightFlame
BrightFlame (she/they) writes, teaches, and makes magic towards a just, regenerative world. Her debut novel THE WORKING—that Starhawk hails as “a heady mix of magic and environmental activism”—launches summer 2024 (Water Dragon Publishing). Her short fiction is featured in Solarpunk Creatures (World Weaver Press), Bioluminescent (Android Press), and Solarpunk Magazine. She’s known for her teaching in the worldwide pagan community and co-founded the Center for Sustainable Futures at Columbia University that features her workshops and nonfiction. She lives on Lenape territory (Turtle Island/US) with a human, a forest, a labyrinth, the Fey, bees, turtles, fungi, rocks, and many other nonhumans.
Lily Brooks-Dalton
Lily Brooks-Dalton’s first novel Good Morning, Midnight has been translated into seventeen languages and was the inspiration for the film adaptation The Midnight Sky. She is also the author of a memoir, Motorcycles I’ve Loved, which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. The Light Pirate, her second novel and third book, is forthcoming in December 2022. A former writer-in-residence at The Kerouac House and The Studios of Key West, she currently lives in Los Angeles.
Tim Chawaga
Tim Chawaga writes plays and speculative fiction. His short fiction has been featured in “Interzone” and “Escape Pod” and his work has been performed in New York and Philadelphia at many venues that have either closed or been converted into gyms. He has a BFA in Drama from the Tisch School of the Arts, is a 2019 graduate of Clarion West and the recipient of George R.R. Martin’s Worldbuilder Scholarship, and currently works in tech. He lives in a co-op in Brooklyn with his partner and dog. His debut novel, “Salvagia”, is forthcoming from Diversion Books.
Interview with Venetia Welby
A.E. Copenhaver
A.E. Copenhaver is a writer, editor, science communicator, and climate interpreter. She’s worked in the environmental and nonprofit sectors for nearly a decade. She has ghostwritten book chapters about cities plagued by factory farming, air pollution, and automobile traffic, and she has written about migrating white sharks, threatened sea otters, and depleted Pacific bluefin tuna. She holds degrees in English and environmental studies from Santa Clara University, and in 2009, she earned her master of art degree in culture and modernity from the University of East Anglia in England. Born in Bellevue, Washington, A.E. Copenhaver has lived in Carmel, California, for most of her life. Her debut novel, My Days of Dark Green Euphoria, is forthcoming from Ashland Creek Press in early 2022.
Samantha M Clark
Samantha M Clark is the author of the award-winning THE BOY, THE BOAT, AND THE BEAST and ARROW (both published by Paula Wiseman Books/Simon & Schuster) and AMERICAN HORSE TALES: HOLLYWOOD (Penguin Workshop/Penguin Random House), as well as the GEMSTONE DRAGONS chapter book series (Bloomsbury). She has lived in the land of rainforests, the land of the queen, and currently writes books from the land of the weird.
Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, and journalist. His latest book is ATTACK SURFACE, a standalone adult sequel to LITTLE BROTHER. He is also the author HOW TO DESTROY SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM, nonfiction about conspiracies and monopolies; and of RADICALIZED and WALKAWAY, science fiction for adults, a YA graphic novel called IN REAL LIFE; and young adult novels like HOMELAND, PIRATE CINEMA and LITTLE BROTHER. His first picture book was POESY THE MONSTER SLAYER (Aug 2020). He maintains a daily blog at Pluralistic.net. He works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is a MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate, is a Visiting Professor of Computer Science at Open University, a Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of North Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Los Angeles.
Read our interview with Julie
Julie Carrick Dalton
Julie Carrick Dalton’s debut novel WAITING FOR THE NIGHT SONG (Tor/Forge, Jan 2021) and a second novel, THE LASTEEKEEPER (2022), both hinge on contemporary climate-related issues. Pre-publication, WAITING FOR THE NIGHT SONG has been named to Most Anticipated 2021 lists by several platforms including Buzzfeed, Medium, and Betches, and has been featured in The Chicago Review of Books. As a journalist, Julie has published more than a thousand articles in publications including The Boston Globe, BusinessWeek, The Hollywood Reporter, Electric Literature, and The Chicago Review of Books. A Tin House alum, 2021 Bread Loaf Environmental Writer’s Conference Fellow, and graduate of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator, Julie holds a master’s in literature and creative writing from Harvard Extension School. She blogs for DeadDarlings and The Writer Unboxed, where she often writes about climate fiction. She is a frequent speaker and workshop leader on the topic of Fiction in the Age of Climate Crisis at universities, high schools, bookstores, and writers conferences. Mom to four kids and two dogs, Julie also owns and operates an organic farm in rural New Hampshire, the backdrop for her novel.
Read her interview with Bruce Smith
Claire Datnow
Claire Datnow was born and raised In Johannesburg, South Africa, which ignited her love for the natural world and for diverse cultures. Claire taught creative writing to gifted and talented students in the Birmingham, Alabama Public Schools. She earned an MA in Education for Gifted and Talented and a second MA in Public History. Her books for middle schoolers include The Adventures of the Sizzling Six, an eco-mystery series, and Edwin Hubble, Discoverer of Galaxies. Claire’s most recent novel, Red Flag Warning: An Eco Adventure, weaves in the theme of global climate change. Claire’s books for adults include a memoir, Behind The Walled Garden of Apartheid and The Nine Inheritors. Claire has received numerous scholarships and awards, including the Alabama Conservancy Blanche Dean Award for Outstanding Nature Educator, a Beeson Samford Writing Project Fellowship, a Fulbright Memorial Fund Teacher Scholarship, and Birmingham Public School Teacher of the Year. Claire’s Monarch Mysteries was long listed for the Green Book Award 2020. Together with her students she founded a nature trail, now named in her honor, the Alabama Audubon-Datnow Forest Preserve. She enjoys visiting schools to inspire students to write their own eco-mystery stories, to become wise stewards of the Earth, and to take action in their own communities.
Read their essay Cost/Benefit
Alex DiFrancesco
Alex DiFrancesco is a multi-genre writer who has published work in Tin House, The Washington Post, Pacific Standard, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The New Ohio Review, Brevity and more. In 2019, they published their essay collection Psychopomps (Civil Coping Mechanisms Press) and their novel All City (Seven Stories Press), which was a finalist for the Ohioana Book Awards. Their short story collection Transmutation (Seven Stories Press) is forthcoming in 2021.They are the recipient of grants and fellowships from PEN America and Sundress Academy for the Arts. They are an assistant editor at Sundress Publications.
Andrew Dolberg
Andrew Dolberg is a co-author of The Great Weather Diviner: The Untold Origin of Punxsutawney Phil. He is a Florida native with a passion for using storytelling to effect change. Andrew is the founder of Champion Briefs, an education resources company that teaches students the power of public speaking, media literacy, research, and critical thinking through storytelling and debate. Andrew is also the author of multiple classroom textbooks about speech & debate. Andrew lives outside of Fort Lauderdale, FL.
Michael J. DeLuca
Michael J. DeLuca lives in the rapidly suburbifying post-industrial woodlands north of Detroit with partner, kid, cats and microbes. He is the publisher of Reckoning, a journal of creative writing on environmental justice. His short fiction has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Apex, Mythic Delirium, and lots of other places. A novella, Night Roll, was released by Stelliform Press in October 2020.
Phyllis R. Dixon
Ms. Dixon is the author of the novels, A Taste for More, Intermission, Down Home Blues, Forty Acres and the newest Something in the Water. She is also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the African American Woman’s Soul. She is a former bank regulator. She is a native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has lived in Houston, Texas (where she owned a bookstore), Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and now resides in Memphis, Tennessee. She is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. and a former board member of the Greater Memphis YWCA. When not reading or writing, she enjoys sports, classic movies, and chocolate.
Aya de León
Aya de León directs the Poetry for the People program in the African American Studies Department at UC Berkeley, teaching poetry and spoken word. In spring 2021, she will be a visiting professor in the graduate creative writing program at the University of San Francisco. Kensington Books publishes her award-winning feminist heist series, which includes SIDE CHICK NATION, the first novel published about Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. In December 2020 Kensington will publish her first standalone novel, A SPY IN THE STRUGGLE, about FBI infiltration of an African American eco-racial justice organization. In June 2020, Aya published her first children’s chapter book, EQUALITY GIRLS AND THE PURPLE REFLECTO-RAY, about a girl who uses her superpowers to confront the president’s sexism. Aya is a founding blogger with The Daily Dose: Feminist Voices for the Green New Deal, and she organizes with the climate movement and the Movement for Black Lives.
Aya’s work has also appeared in Ebony, Guernica, Writers Digest, Bitch Magazine, VICE, The Root, Ploughshares, and on Def Poetry. Aya has organized elementary school students for the climate movement, and has written about it for Mutha Magazine. She also delivered the 2019 Afro ComicCon keynote address on Afro-Futurism as a call for Black people to join the climate movement and save the future. Aya is at work on a YA black/Latina spy girl series for teens called GOING DARK. She is an alumna of Cave Canem and VONA.
Read our interview with Aya
D. G. Driver
D. G. Driver is an optimist at heart, and that’s why she likes to write books about young people who strive to make a difference in the world. From her teen environmentalist in The Juniper Sawfeather Trilogy, a young girl teaching her friends autism acceptance and to stop bullying people with special needs in No One Needed to Know, a girl who bravely searches for a friend lost along the shore of a dark lake in Lost on the Water – A Ghost Story, a princess who desires to be more than a pampered prize for a prince in The Royal Deal, to a boy who learns that being genuine and chivalrous are the ways to win a girl’s heart in All the Love You Write, Driver hopes to write characters that you’ll want to root for.
Sena Desai Gopal
Sena Desai Gopal is a journalist specializing in science and medicine, food, and travel. She was born and raised in India and now lives in
Boston with her husband and two children. Her work has been published in The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, Modern Farmer, and The Times
of India, among others. Sena herself is from a small village in southern India, doomed to submerge in the backwaters of one of India’s
biggest dam projects – The Upper Krishna Project. Her family has lived in the village for 18 generations and she grew up on stories of its
residents and a fair dose of dam politics. Her father was one of the people who fought for and forced the government to fairly compensate
the people who will lose their livelihoods and property because of the dam. This is her debut novel. Find her online at http://www.senagopal.com, on Twitter @senadesaigopal, Instagram, @senadesai
Carrie Firestone
Carrie Firestone is a life-long environmental activist and author of young adult and middle grade fiction, including THE FIRST RULE OF CLIMATE CLUB, a middle grade climate justice novel. When she’s not writing, Carrie chairs her town’s clean energy commission and is working on developing replicable municipal level climate initiatives. Carrie lives in Connecticut, USA with her husband, teen daughters, and rescue dog Roxie.
Susan Fletcher
Susan Fletcher has written twelve novels for kids and young adults, including SHADOW SPINNER, ALPHABET OF DREAMS, the Dragon Chronicles, and JOURNEY OF THE PALE BEAR. She has also written two picture books, A BEAR FAR FROM HOME and DADBLAMED UNION ARMY COW. Her new novel, SEA CHANGE, a YA science fiction love story, will come out from Abrams in June 2025. Her books have been translated into nine languages and include a Golden Kite Honor as well as ALA Notable Books, ALA Best Books for Young Adults and BCCB Blue Ribbon Books. Susan taught for many years in the MFA in Writing for Children program at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Mary Flodin
Before settling into the writer’s life, Mary taught environmental education, English, and art in California public schools.
She lives in a cottage on the Central California Coast with her husband — retired from NASA-Ames atmospheric and planetary sciences (ozone hole, climate change, MARS project, SETI) — and their dog, koi, chickens, and gopher herd, where she spends her time practicing permaculture gardening, plein air painting, making pottery, bird watching, swimming, and enjoying life on the Monterey Bay … and, of course, writing.
An early draft of Fruit of the Devil was a finalist for the Pen Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. Fruit of the Devil is Mary’s first published novel. Her second cli-fi eco-thriller, The Last Transit of Venus, is complete and coming out soon.
Alex Foster
Alex Foster received his MFA from New York University, where he served as fiction editor of Washington Square Review. He now edits books at Henry Holt & Company and Metropolitan. Previously, he studied economics at the University of Chicago and conducted research for the U.S. government and for the World Bank’s Gender Innovation Lab in West Africa.
Emily Grandy
Emily Grandy is an award-winning novelist and editor based in the Midwest.
She writes well-researched literary fiction with an ecological focus. Her writing is a celebration of and an invitation to reconnect with the more-than-human world. Her debut novel, Michikusa House, was awarded the Landmark Prize (Homebound Publications). Her second novel, Cupido Cupido, was a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for socially engaged fiction in 2023. Her other writing has appeared in both academic and literary journals and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Before she became a biomedical editor, Emily did clinical research for a leading academic medical center in Cleveland, Ohio. As a former scientist, Emily’s writing aims to communicate science-based knowledge through storytelling. As an artist and environmental advocate, she hopes to help heal our relationship with the more-than-human world.
Felicity Harley
Felicity’s work has been published in an anthology called Gathered Light – On the Poetry of Joni Mitchell, alongside writers such as Wally Lamb and others. In celebration of the 65th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and on behalf of Poets for Human Rights, Felicity was the winner of the Anita McAndrews Award. In 2014 she was commissioned by Hartbeat Ensemble to write the play “Transplant.” In 2015 Felicity’s book of short stories Portraits and Landscapes, was published, and is now available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Portraits-Landscapes-Felicity-Harley-ebook/dp/B00QU9FULO. Most recently she has completed a five-book science fiction series called ‘Until This Last’. The first book in the series – ‘The Burning Years’ was published in July 2024 and is available on all Amazon sites and elsewhere online.
JoeAnn Hart
JoeAnn Hart is the author of Arroyo Circle, a novel in which hoarding and homelessness are depicted through the dark marriage of environmental degradation and rampant capitalism. Her other books include the prize-winning fiction collection Highwire Act & Other Tales of Survival, the crime memoir Stamford ’76, the novel Float, a dark comedy about plastics in the ocean, and Addled, a social satire. Her short fiction, reviews, and essays have appeared in a wide range of publications, including Orion, Terrain.org, Slate.com, Still Point Arts Quarterly, Lit Hub, and others. Her work explores the relationship between humans, their environments, and the other-than-human world.
P. J. Hoover
P. J. (Tricia) Hoover wanted to be a Jedi, but when that didn’t work out, she became an electrical engineer instead. After a fifteen year bout designing computer chips for a living, P. J. started creating worlds of her own. She’s the award-winning author of The Hidden Code, a Da Vinci Code-style young adult adventure with a kick-butt heroine, and Tut: The Story of My Immortal Life, featuring a fourteen-year-old King Tut who’s stuck in middle school. When not writing, P. J. spends time practicing kung fu, fixing things around the house, and solving Rubik’s cubes.
Read our interview with Angie
Angie Hockman
Angie Hockman is a RWA Golden Heart Award® winner. Her professional background includes stints in law, education, and eco-tourism, but these days you can find her writing romantic stories, enjoying the outdoors with her family, or dreaming of her next travel adventure. She lives in Northeast Ohio with her husband, young son, two cats, and one ornery golden retriever.
Marybeth Holleman
Marybeth Holleman was raised by North Carolina’s Great Smoky Mountains and lives in the embrace of Alaska’s Chugach Mountains. She’s author of Bloom Again: a novel, tender gravity: poems, The Heart of the Sound, co-author of Among Wolves, and co-editor of Crosscurrents North and Alaska Literary Field Guide. Her award-winning work appears in over 50 venues including Orion, Christian Science Monitor, Sierra, North American Review, zoomorphic, and The Guardian.
Read Claire’s essay Writing the Human Element Into Climate Change Via Those Most At Risk
Claire Holroyde
Claire Holroyde is a graphic designer, writer, and storyteller living in the Philadelphia metro area. Her novel The Effort is sci-fi for readers of Station Eleven and Good Morning, Midnight, an electric, heart-pounding novel of love and sacrifice that follows people around the world as they unite to prevent a global catastrophe.
Joan He
Joan He was born and raised in Philadelphia but still will, on occasion, lose her way. At a young age, she received classical instruction in oil painting before discovering that storytelling was her favorite form of expression. She studied Psychology and East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Pennsylvania and currently writes from a desk overlooking the Delaware River. Descendant of the Crane is her debut young adult fantasy. Her next novel, The Ones We’re Meant to Find, is out now.
Andrew Dana Hudson
Andrew Dana Hudson is a speculative fiction writer, sustainability researcher, and futurist. His stories have appeared in Slate Future Tense, Lightspeed Magazine, Vice Terraform, MIT Technology Review, Grist, and many more. His fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, longlisted for the BSFA, and translated into Italian. In 2016 his story “Sunshine State” won the first Everything Change Climate Fiction Contest, and in 2017 he was runner up in the Kaleidoscope Writing The Future Contest. His 2015 essay “On the Political Dimensions of Solarpunk” has helped define and grow the “solarpunk” subgenre. He is a member of the cursed 2020 class of the Clarion Workshop. His first book, Our Shared Storm: A Novel of Five Climate Futures is out April 2022 from Fordham University Press. Andrew has a master’s degree in sustainability from Arizona State University, where he is an Imaginary College Fellow at the Center for Science and the Imagination. He has previously worked in journalism, political consulting, and healthcare innovation. He also teaches yoga and serves as editor-in-chief of Holum Press, which publishes Oasis, a Phoenix-based journal of anticapitalist thought. Follow his work via solarshades.club.
Rachel Griffin
Rachel Griffin writes young adult novels inspired by the magic of the world around her. She is the author of the upcoming The Nature of Witches, releasing from Sourcebooks Fire on June 1, 2021, with a second standalone novel to follow in 2022. Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, Rachel has a deep love of nature, from the mountains to the ocean and all the towering evergreens in between. She adores moody skies and thunderstorms, and hopes more vampires settle down in her beloved state of Washington. On her path to writing novels, Rachel graduated from Seattle University with a Bachelor of Science in diagnostic ultrasound. She worked in healthcare for five years and taught ultrasound at her alma mater before making the switch to a small startup. She has been mentoring in Pitch Wars since 2017 and now writes full-time from her home in the Seattle area. When she isn’t writing, you can find her wandering the PNW, reading by the fire, or drinking copious amounts of coffee and tea. She lives with her husband, small dog, and growing collection of houseplants.
Mark S. Johnson
Mark S. Johnson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning health and science reporter at The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “Though The Earth Gives Way” is his first novel. Born in New York, Johnson grew up in Brookline, Mass., and Oxford and Cambridge in England. He received a BA in English Literature from the University of Toronto. Johnson arrived at The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2000 after stints with four other newspapers. His reporting at The Journal Sentinel has taken him to New York to cover the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and to Houston to cover the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. He spent a year studying diseases that jump from animals to humans, traveling to Kenya, Uganda and Brazil. Johnson shared the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting for stories about the use of genetic technology to diagnose and treat a young boy with a mysterious disease. He has been named a Pulitzer finalist on three other occasions. His work has been anthologized in three editions of The Best American Newspaper Narratives, and he is the co-author of the non-fiction book One In A Billion: The Story of Nic Volker and the Dawn of Genomic Medicine. Johnson, former lead guitarist of punk band The Bloody Stumps, is married to the band’s former bassist, the writer and editor Mary-Liz Shaw. They have a son, Evan, who composes good music. Johnson writes in English. His work is then translated into better English.
Nikki Kallio
Nikki Kallio is the author of the short fiction collection Finding the Bones, Cornerstone Press, 2023. Her essay “Cold Front” appeared in the anthology (Her)oics: Women’s Lived Experiences During the Coronavirus Pandemic, Pact Press, 2021. Her work also has appeared in Midwestern Gothic, rawboned, Wisconsin People & Ideas and elsewhere. She previously worked as a daily newspaper journalist, including as an environmental reporter and later an editorial columnist. She worked in Maine and California before returning home to Wisconsin, where she is now a freelance writer, editor and instructor. She has an MFA in creative writing from Goddard College, and she is currently the fiction editor for the literary journal Minerva Rising.
Maxine Kaplan
Maxine Kaplan is a private investigator and writer. Her books are The Accidental Bad Girl and Wench. She lives and writes in Brooklyn, NY, where she caters to the whims of her dim, but soulful cat.
Georgina Key
Georgina Key is an award-winning author whose debut novel, Shiny Bits In Between, was a recipient of the Phoenix prize for Best New Voice of 2020 (Kops-Fetherling International Book Award) and a finalist for the 2022 International Book Awards in women’s fiction. Her poetry has appeared in several journals and anthologies. Georgina was born and raised in England and currently splits her time between the UK and Texas. Her second novel, Syllables of the Briny World, was published in April 2024. She is currently working on her third novel which is set in England.
Marjorie B. Kellogg
Marjorie leads a double life as theatrical set designer and writer, especially of climate fiction. Her books include Glimmer – just out in October 2021 – Lear’s Daughters, The Dragon Quartet, Harmony, and A Rumor of Angels. She is editor of a local newspaper, The New Franklin Register. She was Associate Professor of Theatre at Colgate University from 1995 – 2017, and spent 45 years designing Broadway, Off-Broadway, and regional theatre productions.
Essay: Weather as Antagonist
Sim Kern
Sim Kern is a speculative fiction writer, exploring intersections of climate change, queerness, and social justice. Their quiet horror novella Depart, Depart! was released in September 2020 from Stelliform Press. Sim also has recently published short stories in Metaphorosis, The Colored Lens, and Wizards in Space Magazine. They are represented by Mariah Nichols of the D4EO Literary Agency for their YA novel, Sand and Swarm. Sim attended Oberlin College for a B.A. in English and Creative Writing. Afterwards, they moved to Houston, where they spent ten years teaching English to middle and high schoolers. Following the birth of their kid, they began pursuing a career in writing. They live near the bayou with their husband, toddler, and two very good dogs.
S. W. Lawrence
Born in Minnesota, S. W. Lawrence grew up in Missouri, then at eighteen realized his California dream with undergraduate years at Stanford, including two years on the tennis team. After med school back in his home state, he completed a residency at UC San Francisco, where he gave his first pub-lic lecture, a talk on nuclear power. In the last ten years he has continued to lecture widely about energy systems, the climate system, epi-demiology, and the electric grid. His book Climate Dragon is published by Sidekick Press.
Maryann Lesert
Maryann Lesert writes about people and place in equal measures. Her first novel, Base Ten (Feminist Press, 2009) followed an astrophysicist’s quest for self among the dunes and stars. Her current novel, Land Marks, is based on two years of boots-on-well-sites research on fracking in Michigan’s state forests. Her plays have been published by New Issues (2008) and in Smith & Kraus’s Best Ten Minute series. Her articles have appeared in EcoWatch and In These Times, and she is a regular presenter on art and activism. Maryann lives in west Michigan, where she teaches creative writing and writes by the big lake.
Sarah E. Lewis
Sarah E. Lewis is the author of The Change Agents: Whispers in the Wind. She developed a love for animals and the environment while growing up near Albany, New York, where her imagination was fueled by spending time in nature. Educated at Middlebury College (B.A., Environmental Studies), the Syracuse University College of Law (J.D.), and the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (M.S., Environmental Science) she entered private law practice. Following the death of her beloved canine, Bebop, she decided to honor his memory by writing a story about him and, at the same time, inspire people to save the earth from the climate crisis.
Edan Lepucki
Edan Lepucki is the author of the novella If You’re Not Yet Like Me and the novels California and Woman No. 17.
California debuted at #3 on the New York Times Bestseller List and was a #1 bestseller on the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle bestsellers lists. California was a fall 2014 selection of Barnes & Noble’s Discover Great New Writers program. Edan and Stephen Colbert are now besties.
Woman No. 17 received rave reviews from the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications, and was #3 on Entertainment Weekly’s Must List. People Magazine’s books editor Kim Hubbard selected Woman No. 17 for the Book of the Month Club. It was named a best book of the year by the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, PopSugar, and The Maine Edge.
Edan created the popular Instagram Mothers Before, and she has edited a book inspired by the project, published by Abrams Press in 2020.
Edan is a graduate of Oberlin College and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and her fiction and nonfiction have been published in Esquire, Narrative Magazine, The New York Times, The Cut, and McSweeney’s, among others. The Los Angeles Times named her a Face to Watch for 2014. She is contributing editor to The Millions and the founder of Writing Workshops Los Angeles.
Rob Long
Rob Long grew up amidst the lore and magic of the world’s greatest weather predictor, Punxsutawney Phil. This led him to coauthor the middle-grade fantasy novel, The Great Weather Diviner: The Untold Origin of Punxsutawney Phil, published by Morgan James Kids. After moving to Delray Beach, FL, Rob became Chair of Palm Beach County’s Soil & Water Conservation District, focusing on environmental education programs. In 2022, he received the Public Service Award from the National Association of Clean Water Agencies. Rob is now a Delray Beach City Commissioner and is proud to serve his community. Rob’s writing often focuses on environmental themes.
Aric McBay
Aric McBay is an organizer, a farmer, and author of seven books, including the novels Kraken Calling and Inversion. His book Full Spectrum Resistance (2019), a two-volume guide to building more effective movements. He writes and speaks about effective social movements, and has organized campaigns around prisoner justice, Indigenous solidarity, pipelines, unionization, and other causes.
Ellen Meeropol
Ellen Meeropol is the author of Sometimes an Island, a mosaic novel featuring a group of older women facing rebuilding after a climate disaster that changes their familiar geographical and social landscape. Her previous novels include the climate fiction title Kinship of Clover, as well as The Lost Women of Azalea Court, Her Sister’s Tattoo, On Hurricane Island, and House Arrest. She is guest editor for the anthology Dreams for a Broken World. Her work has been a finalist for the Sarton Women’s Prize, longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award, and selected by the Women’s National Book Association as a Great Group Reads. Ellen lives in western Massachusetts, where she is a founding mother of Straw Dog Writers Guild.
Deena Metzger
Deena Metzger is a writer, healer, and teacher whose work spans multiple genres including the novel, poetry, non-fiction, and plays. She is the author of many books, including the novels: A Rain of Night Birds, concerning two climatologists, La Negra y Blanca (2012 PEN Oakland Pen Award for Literature), Feral, and The Other Hand. Her other books include The Burden of Light, Ruin and Beauty and Entering the Ghost River: Meditations on the Theory and Practice of Healing. Metzger co-edited Intimate Nature, The Bond Between Women and Animals, which pioneered the radical understanding that animals are highly intelligent and exhibit intent. Her experiences with Elephants in the wild over twenty years is based on their spiritual agency and complex narrative communication. Some of that experience is chronicled in her forthcoming novel, La Vieja: A Journal of Fire. She has developed The Literature of Restoration to, among other goals, advance Earth based writing, restore climate and counter extinction.
Sam J. Miller
Sam J. Miller is the Nebula-Award-winning author of The Art of Starving (an NPR best of the year) and Blackfish City (a best book of the year for Vulture, The Washington Post, Barnes & Noble, and more – and a “Must Read” in Entertainment Weekly and O: The Oprah Winfrey Magazine). A recipient of the Shirley Jackson Award and a graduate of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, Sam’s work has been nominated for the World Fantasy, Theodore Sturgeon, John W. Campbell and Locus Awards, and reprinted in dozens of anthologies. A community organizer by day, he lives in New York City.
Lydia Millet
Lydia Millet has written more than a dozen novels and story collections, often about the ties between people and other animals and the crisis of extinction. Her story collection Fight No More received an Award of Merit from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2019, and her collection Love in Infant Monkeys was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2010. She also writes essays, opinion pieces and other ephemera and has worked as an editor and staff writer at the Center for Biological Diversity since 1999. She lives in the desert outside Tucson with her children and boyfriend.
Sequoia Nagamatsu
SEQUOIA NAGAMATSU is the author of the forthcoming novels, HOW HIGH WE GO IN THE DARK (2022) and GIRL ZERO (William Morrow/Harper Collins and Bloomsbury UK) and the story collection, WHERE WE GO WHEN ALL WE WERE IS GONE (Black Lawrence Press), silver medal winner of the 2016 Foreword Reviews Indies Book of the Year Award, an Entropy Magazine Best Book of 2016, and a notable book at Buzzfeed. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as Conjunctions, The Southern Review, ZYZZYVA, Tin House, Iowa Review, Lightspeed Magazine, and One World: A Global Anthology of Short Stories, and has been listed as notable in Best American Non-Required Reading and the Best Horror of the Year. He teaches creative writing at Saint Olaf College and the Rainier Writing Workshop Low-Residency MFA program and lives in Minneapolis with his wife, the writer Cole Nagamatsu, their cat Kalahira, their real dog Fenris, and a robot dog named Calvino.
Janna McMahan
Between 2008 and 2012, Janna McMahan published the novels CALLING HOME, THE OCEAN INSIDE, and ANONYMITY, and a novella entitled DECORATIONS. Her first novel was a “Need to Read” selection for Target stores nationwide. McMahan’s novels have bern nominated for the SIBA book award and the Kentucky Literary Award and her short story collection was a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Fiction Award. She contributed to an anthology selected for the Book-of-the-Month Club, as well as the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and USA Today’s bestseller lists. McMahon has received literary awards and published numerous short stories and personal essays in journals and anthologies. She now seeking representation for three new novels.
Nina Munteanu
Nina is a Canadian scientist and novelist. She worked for 25 years as an environmental consultant in the field of aquatic ecology and limnology, publishing papers and technical reports on water quality and impacts to aquatic systems. She has written over a dozen eco-fiction, science fiction and fantasy novels. An award-winning short story writer, and essayist, Nina currently lives in Toronto where she teaches writing at the University of Toronto and George Brown College. Her book “Water Is…”—a scientific study and personal journey as limnologist, mother, teacher and environmentalist—was picked by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times as 2016 ‘The Year in Reading’. Nina’s most recent novel “A Diary in the Age of Water”—about four generations of women and their relationship to water in a rapidly changing world—will be released in May 2020 by Inanna Publications.
Diane Owens Prettyman
Diane Owens Prettyman is the author of “Love is for the Birds”, a novel that deftly combines contemporary romance with eco-fiction. Her novel portrays the story of an island devastated by a hurricane. The town is also home to the last wild flock of endangered Whooping Cranes. Citizens of the island bond together to restore the Wildlife Refuge before the Cranes return to their wintering grounds on the Texas Gulf.
Steven L. Peck
Steven L. Peck is an ecology professor at BYU, where he studies the ecology of birds and insects. He has published over 50 scientific articles on evolutionary ecology and the philosophy of biology. He has also published four literary novels, including A Short Stay in Hell, published by Strange Violin Editions; the magical realism novel The Scholar of Moab, published by Torrey House Press—an AML novel award winner and Montaigne Medal Finalist; and the AML novel award winner Gilda Trillim, Shepherdess of Rats. His climate change fiction, King Leere Goatherd of the La Sals, published by BCC Press, was a semi-finalist for the Black Lawrence Press Big Moose Prize for a literary novel, short-listed for the Hoffer Award, and received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. His poetry has appeared in Crescendo, Cold Mountain Review, Dialogue, Flyway, Irreantum, New Myths, Pedestal Magazine, Prairie Schooner, Red Rock Review, Wayfare, Whitefish Review, and numerous other publications. His poetry collection, Incorrect Astronomy, was published by Aldrich Press. His Second poetry collection of CliFi, Experiments in Fading Light, will be published by Signature Books in early 2025.
Midge Raymond
Midge Raymond is the author of the novel My Last Continent and the award-winning short-story collection Forgetting English. Her writing has appeared in TriQuarterly, American Literary Review, Bellevue Literary Review, the Los Angeles Times magazine, the Chicago Tribune, Poets & Writers, and many other publications.
Midge worked in publishing in New York before moving to Boston, where she taught communication writing at Boston University for six years. She has taught creative writing at Boston’s Grub Street Writers, Seattle’s Richard Hugo House, and San Diego Writers, Ink. She has also published two books for writers, Everyday Writing and Everyday Book Marketing.
Midge lives in the Pacific Northwest, where she is co-founder of the boutique publisher Ashland Creek Press.
Rebecca Roanhorse
Rebecca Roanhorse is a NYTimes bestselling and Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Award-winning speculative fiction writer and the recipient of the 2018 Astounding (Campbell) Award for Best New Writer.
Rebecca has published multiple award-winning short stories and five novels, including two in The Sixth World Series, Star Wars: Resistance Reborn, Race to the Sun for the Rick Riordan imprint, and her latest novel, the epic fantasy Black Sun. She has also written for Marvel Comics and for television, and had projects optioned by Amazon Studios, Netflix, and Paramount TV. She lives in Northern New Mexico with her husband, daughter, and pup. She drinks a lot of black coffee.
Kritika H. Rao
Kritika H. Rao is a science fiction and fantasy writer, a yoga teacher, and a project manager specializing in adult learning. Her stories explore themes of consciousness, self vs world, and identity, usually through the lens of Hindu philosophy. The Surviving Sky, an epic science fantasy, is her debut. She can be found on Twitter @KritikaHRao, where she tweets craft-related threads and posts the occasional amateur comic about the writing process.
P. Finian Reilly
P. Finian Reilly studied history at the University of Chicago, then got a different kind of education working as a local newspaper reporter in Montana. In that job learned to drive a motorboat alongside a burning lakeshore, interview antigovernment militia leaders, and appreciate just how thorny humanity’s relationship with the natural world can get. After earning top state and regional environmental-reporting awards, he earned his J.D. at Georgetown and now lives and works as an environmental attorney in New Jersey. His debut novel ICE’S END is scheduled for publication by 12 Willows Press in June 2025.
Tracy Richardson
Tracy Richardson is the author of the young adult series The Catalysts, including Book I, The Field, and Book II, Catalyst. The Field won the Eric Hoffer Award and a Bronze Medal for the Moonbeam Children’s Book Award, and was a Finalist in the Science Fiction category for the American Fiction Awards. Catalyst won the New Age category and was a Finalist in the Young Adult category for the American Fiction Awards.
Tracy has a degree in biology, and her science background plays a significant role in her writing; her books include science themes such as quantum physics, collective consciousness, and the universal energy field, as well as strong environmental themes. There is no second planet. Tracy lives in Indianapolis and enjoys crafting, cooking, and being outdoors.
Kate Risse
Kate Risse is the author of the novel, Inland, a story about catastrophic sea-level rise along the Eastern Seaboard, and a family’s separation, survival and resilience. Kate teaches Spanish language and culture at Tufts University. When not in Boston, she spends time on Dog Island, on the Florida Panhandle, and in the mountains of Vermont.
Denise S. Robbins
Denise S. Robbins is from Madison, Wisconsin, the city where she grew up and to which she returned after sixteen years of living and working in climate activism on the East Coast. The former communications director at the notable Chesapeake Climate Action Network, she continues to work as a consultant for several climate advocacy groups. In Madison she lives with her husband in a yellow house circled by oaks and pines and two owls. She is a Pushcart Prize–nominated author whose stories have been published in literary journals including The Barcelona Review, Gulf Coast, and more. Read her work at http://www.denisesrobbins.com. She is represented by Annie M. Romano of Olswanger Literary.
Jacob Sackin
Jacob earned a Master’s degree in creative writing from Northern Arizona University in 2005 and has been an environmental educator for 15 years. His first young adult novel, Islands, was published in 2008.
Vanessa Saunders
Vanessa Saunders is a professor of practice at Loyola University New Orleans. Her feminist, experimental novel, The Flat Woman, won the Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize with Fiction Collective 2 and will be published by University of Alabama Press. Her hybrid work, fiction, and poetry has appeared in Seneca Review, Los Angeles Review, Sycamore Review, Passages North, and [PANK] among others. Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, she received her MFA from Louisiana State University.
Monica Sherwood
Monica Sherwood writes middle grade fiction. She is a former elementary school teacher with a master’s degree in Childhood and Special Education from Hunter College. She specializes in Learning Disabilities and used reading and writing as a tool for inclusion in her work with students with dyslexia.
She currently works in edTech designing digital products for teachers and kids at Backpack Interactive. Her debut novel, The Ice House was published in November 2021 with Little, Brown Young Readers. She is represented by Steven Malk at Writers House.
Constance Ahuva Batya Scharff
Constance “Ahuva Batya” Scharff, PhD, is an internationally recognized speaker and author on the topics of addiction and trauma recovery, the psychological impacts of climate change, and women’s mental health. She is the founder and director of the Institute for Complementary and Indigenous Mental Health Research, an international consortium of mental health researchers and practitioners working to improve mental health globally. Dr. Scharff is the 2019 recipient of St. Lawrence University’s Sol Feinstone Humanitarian Award, honoring her service to and advocacy for those suffering from mental illness, trauma, and addiction.
Dr. Scharff’s research on trauma led her to an interest in better understanding trauma related to climate change. While her award-winning and bestselling nonfiction books focus on mental health, her latest release, “The Path to God’s Promise” is a cli-fi novel that combines Jewish perspectives on social action with climate science. Her research team is currently researching the concept of “bravery,” in part as it relates to climate change action.
Ashley Shelby
Ashley Shelby is prize-winning writer whose fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in Slate, The New York Times Book Review, LitHub, Audubon, the Los Angeles Review, J Journal: New Writings on Social Justice, and other literary outlets. She’s received the Red Hen Press Short Fiction Award, the Enizagam Short Story Award, the Third Coast Fiction Prize, and has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. Her debut novel, South Pole Station, published in 2017, received praise from The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Public Radio, Publishers Weekly, USA Today, Time, Library Journal, The Guardian, LitHub, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, and Bookpage. It was also named a New York Times Editor’s Pick and an Indie Next Pick, as well as a Best Book of 2017 by Shelf Awareness. South Pole Station also received the 2017 Lascaux Prize in Fiction. It was released in paperback in 2018.
As a journalist, Ashley’s original reporting on the Exxon Valdez litigation was published in The Nation, E: The Environmental Magazine, and alternet. She is also the author of Red River Rising: The Anatomy of a Flood and the Survival of an American City, a work of narrative nonfiction praised by Salon, the Associated Press, Philadelphia Inquirer, Library Journal, and other media outlets.
She lives in the Twin Cities with her family, where, in her super plentiful free time, she watches college basketball totally alone, runs improv Two Guys Who Hate Each Other skits with her son to improve their extemporaneous speaking skills, engages in enormously complex Lego-people scenarios with her daughter, teaches herself blues guitar, and maintains her black belt in awkwardness through frequent practice.
Patti Sherlock
Patti Sherlock’s latest book, Alenya the Nectar Collector, a midgrade novel, will come out in October 2025 from a Maine environmental publisher. Her book, Letters from Wolfie, Viking, was chosen for two One City, One Book events–in Westminister, CO, and Solano Reads, CA. It was nominated for two literary awards in Japan, the Rebecca Caudill Award, 2009, the California 2006-2007 Young Reader’s Medal, and Young Reader’s Choice in four states. It won the Merial Human-Animal Bond Award, and was a Junior Library Guild selection.
Her other books include Some Fine Dog, Holiday, Young Reader’s Choice nominee in three states, and Four of a Kind, Holiday, runner-up for the Spur Award for juvenile fiction from Western Writers of America. Her nonfiction books include, Taking Back Our Lives, Acta, and a memoir, A Dog for All Seasons, St. Martins, 2010.
Abhi Sukhdial
Abhi’s novella, Three Days Till EOC, a sci-fi thriller about climate change, won Stone Soup’s annual international book contest and was published by them in September 2020. Stone Soup is a literary magazine for children 14 years and under. In 2021, the book was selected as an Honor winner in the Young Adult Fiction category of the Green Earth Book Awards, a national award bestowed by the environmental nonprofit, The Nature Generation, to recognize children’s and young adult literature that best promotes environmental stewardship. Abhi’s video presentation for the 2021 EnviroKids Literacy Festival where he discusses climate change and what inspired him to write the book, was streamed to more than 1000 schools around the country, and is available as a resource to educators worldwide through The Nature Generation website.
His short stories, book/movie reviews, essays, art, and comics have been published in Stone Soup Magazine, Skipping Stones Magazine, Kids World Fun International Short Story Contest, and Letters about Literature. He is a Next Gen Under 30 Oklahoma honoree, a National Winner of the PTA Reflections Arts Program, and a recent recipient of the Scholastic Art and Writing Award.
When he’s not writing, Abhi enjoys watching and critiquing movies, and playing video games. He attends school in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
Marissa Slaven
Marissa Slaven was born and raised in Montreal by parents who taught her that it was her responsibility to do her part to make the world a better place. She has been helping people in her role as a palliative care physician for twenty-five years and she continues to get great satisfaction from this work. She is the mother of three grown children and two dogs. She has always enjoys reading books of multiple genres and frequently has two or three books on the go at the same time. She especially loves stories with strong female characters and was searching for a YA novel where the heroine saves the world using her intelligence and compassion. She was inspired by her daughter to write Code Blue, an eco-fiction thriller, where a teenage girl and her friends battle climate change. Marissa took courses at Humber college where she honed her writing skills. In the process of writing the novel, Marissa taught herself about the climate crisis. She became a passionate climate activist and continues to both write and try to do her part to make the world a more sustainable place for all living things. Marissa loves interacting with her readers and speaking with young people about the environment. She recently completed Code Red, the sequel to Code Blue, and is working on a screenplay account of her great-uncle’s involvement in the Spanish Civil War.
Bruce Smith
Bruce L. Smith, PhD, is a wildlife biologist, science writer, and children’s novelist. During his career with the US Fish and Wildlife Service he managed and conducted ecological research on large mammal species across the western United States. Besides writing for scientific journals and popular periodicals, he’s an award-winning author of five books of natural history, conservation, and outdoor adventure. Drawing on his experiences living near and studying wild animals in the American West, he now writes novels of magical realism and animal fantasy that capture the imaginations of young readers (and older ones too!) and immerse them in the natural world. In his debut middle-grade novel, Legend Keepers: The Chosen One, climate change’s effects on alpine environments provides a subtext for an adventure among the peaks featuring an orphaned mountain goat with a weighty destiny. This is the first book in the Legend Keepers trilogy. Bruce and his wife Diana live in southwest Montana where he continues his conservation work and writing.
Sara St. Antoine
Sara St. Antoine is an author and freelance writer who has long been fascinated by the role of stories in shaping (and reflecting) our understanding of the natural world. A graduate of Williams College, Sara holds a master’s degree from the Yale School of the Environment. Her debut novel, Three Bird Summer, was selected as a Boston Globe Best Book of the Year and an ALSC Notable Children’s Book for middle grade readers. Sara also edits the Stories from Where We Live anthology series, which celebrates place-based literature from different regions of North America. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and two teenage daughters.
Saul Tanpepper
Saul Tanpepper is the author of the popular post-apocalyptic book series BUNKER 12 and ZPOCALYPTO, as well as the climate fiction stories “Leviathan” and “They Dreamed of Poppies.” A former combat medic and retired PhD scientist from Northern California, he is the co-author (as Kenneth James Howe) of the African diaspora memoirs “Relentless” and “I Will Not Grow Downward.”
Lauren C. Teffeau
Lauren was born and raised on the East Coast, educated in the South, employed in the Midwest, and now lives and dreams in the Southwest. When she was younger, she poked around in the back of wardrobes, tried to walk through mirrors, and always kept an eye out for secret passages, fairy rings, and messages from aliens. She was disappointed. Now, she writes to cope with her ordinary existence. Her novel Implanted (2018, Angry Robot) was shortlisted for the 2019 Compton Crook award for best first SF/F/H novel. Her short fiction can be found a variety of professional and semi-pro speculative fiction magazines and anthologies.
Frederick Turner
Frederick Turner’s science fiction epic poems led to his being a consultant for NASA. He received Hungary’s highest literary honor for his translations of Hungarian poetry with the distinguished scholar and Holocaust survivor Zsuzsanna Ozsváth. He won Poetry’s Levinson Prize, and has often been nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature. Born in England, raised in Africa by his anthropologist parents Victor and Edie Turner, educated at Oxford University in English Language and Literature, he was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1977. He is a Shakespearean scholar, an environmental theorist, an authority on the philosophy of Time, poet laureate of traditional Karate, and author of over forty books. Turner is Founders Professor of Arts and Humanities emeritus at the University of Texas at Dallas, having taught at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Kenyon College, and the University of Exeter in England. A former editor of The Kenyon Review, he is a winner of the PEN Southwest Chapter Golden Pen Award and several other literary, artistic and academic honors, and has participated in literary and TV projects that have won a Benjamin Franklin Book Award and an Emmy.
Steve Tomasula
Steve Tomasula is the author of The Book of Portraiture, IN & OZ, and VAS: An Opera in Flatland, the novel of the bio-tech revolution. He is also the author of TOC: A New-Media Novel, which received the Mary Shelly Award for Excellence in Fiction and an E-Lit Best Book of the Year Award. His essays on bio-art, new narrative, and literature have appeared widely, while over sixty short stories are included in magazines such as Bomb, McSweeneys, and The Iowa Review, with a number of them being collected in Once Human: Stories. He is the editor of Conceptualisms: The Anthology of Prose, Poetry, Visual, Found, E- & Hybrid Writing as Contemporary Art. His most recent novel is Ascension, which is about our shifting relationship to nature. He lives in Chicago.
Diane Turnshek
Diane Turnshek is an astronomer and science fiction author/editor concerned about the continuation of Earth’s species in the wake of climate disruption. She began the annual Triangulation series of SF/F/H anthologies in 2003. The recent environmentally-themed issues have been about light pollution, the loss of biodiversity and sustainable housing, all relating to recent anthropogenic changes to our ecosystem.
Debbie Urbanski
Debbie Urbanski is the author of the novel After World (Simon & Schuster, 2023) and the forthcoming collection of stories Portalmania (Simon and Schuster, May 2025). Her stories and essays have also been published in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, The Best American Experimental Writing, The Sun, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Nature, Terrain.org, Orion, and Granta. In 2019, she received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award for emerging women writers of exceptional promise.
She lives and hikes with her family in Central New York.
Sarena Ulibarri
Sarena Ulibarri lives, writes, and plants trees in the American Southwest. She is the author of Another Life, published by Stelliform Press, and Steel Tree, published by Android Press. Her short fiction has appeared in magazines such as Lightspeed, DreamForge, and Solarpunk Magazine, as well as anthologies such as Solar Flare: Solarpunk Stories and Biketopia: Feminist Bicycle Science Fiction Stories in Extreme Futures. As an anthologist, she curated or co-edited several international anthologies of optimistic climate fiction: Glass and Gardens, Multispecies Cities, and Solarpunk Creatures. She serves as a story review for Grist’s Imagine 2200 Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors contest.
Francesca G. Varela
Francesca G. Varela was raised in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. In 2018, she received her master’s degree in Environmental Humanities from the University of Utah, where she focused her studies on environmental writing. Francesca’s dream of becoming an author began in third grade, and her writing career had an early start; she wrote her award-winning first novel, Call of the Sun Child, when she was only 18 years old, and she wrote her second novel, Listen, when she was only 20. Her third novel, The Seas of Distant Stars, won the 2019 Independent Publisher Book Award for Science Fiction, and her forthcoming cli-fi novel, Blue Mar, will be published in March 2021. When not writing or reading, Francesca enjoys playing piano, figure skating, hiking, identifying wild plants, gardening, and traveling whenever she can.
J.J. Viertel aka Josh and Jack Viertel
J. J. Viertel is the pseudonym used by the father-son writing team of Jack and Josh Viertel who live in Maine and New York. With Josh Viertel’s background in environmental activism and organic farming and Jack Viertel’s deep roots in storytelling and theater, the duo offers a novel that’s as grounded in real-life experience as it is gripping in plot. They mostly write in Szechuan restaurants, but occasionally retreat to a shared Google doc, or a sofa overlooking Eggemogin Reach on the coast of Maine. The Glass Eel is their debut thriller.
Jack Viertel has played National steel guitar behind Bonnie Raitt, The Pointer Sisters, and Son House, worked with playwrights from August Wilson and David Henry Hwang to Tony Kushner, spent time as a theater critic, and supervised 70 revivals of Broadway musicals for the Tony-honored Encores! program at New York City Center. He wrote the New York Times bestseller The Secret Life Of The American Musical, which remains a perennial favorite of musical theater programs in colleges and universities across America and is currently being developed as a concert evening for Carnegie Hall. His novel Broadway Melody was published in 2024, and he conceived such Broadway shows as Smokey Joe’s Café, After Midnight, and The Prom. He was the Creative Consultant for Hairspray, A Christmas Story, Dear Evan Hansen and the current The Outsiders. There are nine Tony awards sitting on his piano, which he cannot play. He’s an openwater scuba diver and a certified Memphis-in-May barbecue judge.
Josh Viertel has been a farmer, activist and educator in the sustainable food movement for over 20 years. From 2008-2012 he served as President of Slow Food USA, the US branch of the global Slow Food movement. Before his work at Slow Food, Josh was a founding director of the Yale Sustainable Food Project, which built an organic farm on campus to bring local, sustainable food to the university. Josh earned his AB in Philosophy and Literature from Harvard University and has been named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. He has also been listed as one of the seven most powerful voices in the food movement by Forbes and Michael Pollan. Now he is developing Harlem Valley Homestead, a hospitality and retreat center integrated into a diversified working farm outside of New York City. Josh splits his time between the Harlem Valley, where he grows, forages, catches or hunts nearly all of what he eats, and Manhattan, where he doesn’t.
Clara Ward
Clara Ward lives in Silicon Valley on the border between reality and speculative fiction. Their latest novel, Be the Sea, features a near-future ocean voyage, chosen family, and sea creature perspectives, while delving into our ocean, our selves, and how all futures intertwine. Their short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Decoded Pride, Small Wonders, and is upcoming in The Neurodiversiverse. When not using words to teach or tell stories, Clara uses wood, fiber, and glass to make practical or completely impractical objects.
Donna Glee Williams
Pushcart Prize-nominee Donna Glee Williams was born in Mexico, the daughter a Kentucky farm-girl and a Texas large-animal veterinarian. She graduated from Tulane University, then earned an MFA and PhD from Louisiana State University. The imagined craft societies of her fantasy novels The Braided Path, Dreamers, and The Night Field owe a lot to her years of wayfaring on four continents; she has sunk deep roots into many soils. As a finalist in the 2015 Roswell Awards for Short Science Fiction, her short story “Saving Seeds” was performed in Hollywood by Jasika Nicole. Her speculative fiction has been recognized by Honorable Mentions from both the Writers of the Future competition and Gardner Dozois’s Best of the Year collection. Her poetry has appeared in The Bellingham Review, The New Orleans Review, The New Laurel Review, The New Delta Review, The New Orleans Times-Picayune, The Maple Leaf Rag, Writing from the Inside, The Beltane Papers, Mesechabe, The Fly, The Science Fiction Association’s Star*Line, and Friends Journal. She carries around a big midwife’s bag full of practices that help others give birth to their own poetry in hour-long to week-long workshops or through private mentoring (by phone, face, or Zoom.) In the past, she’s worked as turnabout crew on a schooner, librarian, environmental activist, registered nurse, educator, and creative coach. These days she mostly walks in the woods, writes, and leads dream-groups in her little cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains, forever drunk on the isoprene exhalations of the trees.
Sharon J. Wishnow
Sharon J. Wishnow is a transplanted New Englander who makes her home in Northern Virginia.
In addition to writing upmarket fiction with environmental themes, Sharon writes non-fiction in the science, technology, and business categories with a passion for research, seashells, birds, and the ocean. She has been a member of the Boston Malacological Club since she was ten years old. She credits growing up by the ocean and family camping trips for her love and respect for all that is outside her door.
She writes stories about flawed, strong women with plots that have environmental themes that show how changes in the environment change people.
Sharon is the former Vice President of Communications for the Women’s Fiction Writers Association (WFWA), the founder of Women’s Fiction Day, and is the Executive Editor of the WFWA magazine, WriteOn! She has an MFA from George Mason University, a publications certification from George Washington University, and a BA from Clark University. She regularly speaks about research and writing and publishes a regular newsletter, Research for Writers and Other Curious People.
When she’s not writing or researching, you can find her in the garden, watching the birds in her backyard, or feeding peanuts to her local squirrels.
The Pelican Tide is her first novel. She is represented by Ann Leslie Tuttle of Dystel, Goderich & Bourret LLC.
Kate Woodworth
Kate Woodworth is an award winning novelist and short story writer whose work of eco-fiction, Little Great Island, is due out from Sibylline Press in spring 2025. Little Great Island focuses on the effect of climate change on a lobster fishing community located on an island off the Maine coast. In addition to her previously published novel, Racing Into the Dark (E.P. Dutton), Woodworth has published stories in Cimarron Review, Shenandoah, Western Humanities and other literary magazines and enjoyed a long career as a medical writer in academic medical settings. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University.
John Yunker
John Yunker is a writer of plays, short stories and novels focused on human/animal relationships. He is also an artist focused on our relationship with languages, countries and cultures.
He is co-founder of Ashland Creek Press, a publisher devoted to environmental and animal rights literature. He is author of the novels The Tourist Trail and the sequel Where Oceans Hide Their Dead. He is also editor of the anthologies Writing for Animals and Among Animals.
His full-length play Meat the Parents was a finalist at the Centre Stage New Play Festival (South Carolina) and semi-finalist in the AACT new play contest. Species of Least Concern was a finalist in the 2016 Mountain Playhouse Comedy Festival. His short plays have been produced by theaters in Florida, New York, Oregon and Washington DC. He also has a passion for languages and for helping organizations develop better multilingual websites.
Katy Yocom
Katy Yocom was born and raised in Atchison, Kansas. After earning a degree in journalism from the University of Kansas, she moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where she has lived ever since. Her novel Three Ways to Disappear (Ashland Creek Press, 2019) won the Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature, the First Horizon Award, and the Micro Press Award. It was also named a Barnes & Noble Top Indie Favorite.
To research the novel, she traveled to India, funded by a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation. In 2019, she received an Al Smith Fellowship Award for artistic excellence from the Kentucky Arts Council. She has also received grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and served as writer-in-residence at Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Crosshatch Hill House, and PLAYA. Her writing has appeared in Newsweek, Salon, LitHub, American Way (the American Airlines magazine), The Louisville Review, decomP magazinE, and elsewhere. Her short fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She holds an MFA in Writing from Spalding University.
She lives with her family in Louisville and serves as associate director of the low-residency graduate writing programs of the School of Creative and Professional Writing at Spalding University.
Cynthia Zhang
Cynthia Zhang was born in Beijing, China and grew up in various college towns before landing near St. Louis, Missouri. She studied comparative literature and creative writing at the University of Chicago, and the experience was insufficiently harrowing to prevent her from pursuing Ph.D. work at the University of Southern California. Her work has appeared in Leading Edge, Coffin Bell, Phantom Drift, and other venues. After the Dragons is her debut novel.
Climate Fiction Writers League 