Climate Non-Fiction

Find these at Bright Green Future’s Bookshop.org Climate Non-Fiction page.

Bright Green Futures is dedicated to surfacing hopeful climate fiction, but many non-fiction resources directly inform how to create those stories: essays on how fiction narratives need to change, books on arts in activism and how to change our perspective on nature, as well as websites, conferences, and more that directly engage in climate-solutions visioning.

Visit Bright Green Future’s Bookshop.org Page to purchase paper copies on this list!

ESSAYS/ARTICLES

• What if Climate Change Meant Not Doom— But Abundance? (Rebecca Solnit, Washington Post, 2023)

• Rewriting the Future (Susan Kaye Quinn, DreamForge Magazine, 2023)

• Write the Future You Want to Live In (Ana Sun, DreamForge Magazine, 2023)

• The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin (also in book form)

• On the Political Dimensions of Solarpunk by Andrew Dana Hudson

BOOKS ON ART/WRITING

• Spring, Summer, Asteroid, Bird by Henry Lien

• Heroine’s Journey by Gail Carriger

• The Great Derangement by Amitav Ghosh

• Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown

• The Art of Activism by Steve Duncombe and Stave Lambert

BOOKS ON POLITICS/CLIMATE CRISIS

• The Great Derangement by Amitav Ghosh

• Active Hope by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone

• Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit

• Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism by Yanis Varoufakis

• On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder

• Doing Democracy by Bill Moyer

• The Great Transition by Nick Fuller Googins

• The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin

• Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg

• Social Change Now by Deepa Iyer

• This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein

BOOKS ON NATURE

• Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Milkweed Editions)

• The Light Eaters by Zoë Schlanger

• Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard

• How Forests Think by Eduardo Kohn

WEBSITES

• Grist (Climate.Justice.Solutions), a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future.

• Seeds of a Good Anthropocene website

• Dear Tomorrow, sharing personal climate messages

CONFERENCES/CENTERS

• Pittsburgh’s Solarpunk Future 2024 expo (and Discord)

• Solarpunk Conference: Rays of Resilience, an online solarpunk conference on June 29^th 2024

• Climate Imaginarium, center for climate and culture in NYC

• Arizona State University, Center for Science and the Imagination (ASU’s Climate Action Almanac trailer in Episode 9)

ONLINE DISCUSSIONS/PANELS/VIDEOS

• Solarpunk explainer video by Our Changing Climate (2023)

• Virtual Hopepunk Author Panel (Watertown Library 2023)

• Fascism and the Failure of Imagination video by Zoe Bee

• Solarpunk Author Panel launching Metamorphosis, NYC 2024 Recording

• Sue’s Solarpunk zine (available for download and printing)

Academic Studies

from Melissa Aïnseba’s Master’s Thesis, Utrecht University, Netherlands (2022)

As solarpunk and hopeful climate fiction authors write the stories to fight the climate crisis, academics are studying this new genre and the authors who are co-creating it. Below are academic studies, papers, and teaching resources either connected to guests of the podcast or directly relevant to the impact of climate fiction.

RESEARCH ON SOLARPUNK

• Rewriting the Future: How are individual and collective processes of agency and resistance negotiated through writing climate fiction? Melissa Aïnseba, Utrecht University, Netherlands (2022).

• Solarpunk and Alternative Social Imaginaries: Sarena Ulibarri’s Narratives of Radical Hope. Merin John and Nisha Viswanathan, National Institute of Technology Tiruchirappalli, India (2024).

• Affective Configurations of Urban Catastrophe in Contemporary Latin American Fiction. Natalia López, Latin American Studies, Diego Portales University, Chile (2023). (Abstract in English, paper in Portuguese and Spanish)

• The Impact of Climate Fiction: An Empiricle Study of Readers. Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Environmental Humanities (2018) 10 (2): 473–500.

• Addressing Climate Change with Behavioral Science: A global intervention tournament in 63 countries. Madalina Vlasceanu, et. al. Science Advances, 7 Feb 2024, Vol 10, Issue 6.

TEACHING RESOURCES FOR HOPEFUL CLIMATE FICTION

• Climate Change Short Stories for Students and Teachers (Sarah Outterson-Murphy, Morningside Center, Classroom Resources, April 17, 2023)

• Subscribe to Henry Lien’s newsletter to find out when he’s teaching classes on 4-Act Eastern Storytelling (based on his book, Spring, Summer, Asteroid, Bird).

• Sue’s Solarpunk Writing Class (dates/times to be announced) SIGN UP TO GET NOTIFIED ABOUT CLASSES