In this episode, I chat with Author Sanjana Sekhar about her new story in the Metamorphosis Collection and how connections—across family, culture, and time—are what will pull us through the climate crisis.
Text Transcript:
Susan Kaye Quinn
Hello friends! Welcome to Bright Green Futures, Episode 23: Creating Connection with Solarpunk and Author Sanjana Sekhar.
I'm your host, Susan Kaye Quinn, and we're here to lift up stories about a more sustainable and just world and talk about the struggle to get there. Today, we're going to talk with Sanjana Sekhar, a fellow author in the Metamorphosis Anthology with her delightful story, Cabbage Koora, A Prognostic Autobiography, which is about food, culture, family, and connection throughout the climate crisis. And I can't wait to have her read an excerpt and discuss the story. But first, a bit about Sanjana. She's a South Indian American author, filmmaker, and climate activist whose focus is on healing extractive narratives to instead build a healthy human future on earth. Her work in filmmaking and writing are winning awards and I can see why.
Hello, Sanjana! Welcome to the pod.
Sanjana
Hi Sue, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Me, as well. And I can't wait to be in conversation with you about your work. But first, I would love for our listeners to hear a bit of Cabbage Koora for themselves, if you would like to do a reading for us.
Sanjana
I would love that. I'll read a little section here. This is starting about two thirds of the way through the story. Here we go.
Friday, July 9th, 2077
I eye the box on my coffee table with suspicion. Gita’s had some strange contraption called Iris delivered to me, and she swears it's worth whatever trouble it surely brings. She instructed me to be open to it and threatened to call me an old codger if I even refused to try it out.
“Iris makes your eye a projector, Amma,” she said last time we talked. “Your eye, can you believe it? It'll be like Reyna and I are there with you, 3D, walking and talking and interacting with you.”
The idea of feeling like my daughter and granddaughter are physically with me ultimately makes Iris an easy sell, despite my hesitations. Remembering her words, I decide to open the damn box.
When Gita told me she and her partner, Gloria, had decided to move away from LA to raise Reyna somewhere that was more climate stable, I understood. My mother left her mother in India to come to America in search of a better life, after the literal and metaphorical scarcity that British colonialism imposed on the subcontinent. At the time, who would have thought that decades later, rampant consumption and capitalism would finally deliver that same scarcity here to our doorsteps in America?
Ultimately, it was the local resilience, the grassroots ideas, the place-based knowledge that allowed us to survive. These days, I live at Aunty Gang Collective (the name was inspired by Gita always calling me and my cherished group of friends “Aunty Gang”. Here, there's nothing fancy, but there's music in the streets every day.
Susan Kaye Quinn
So beautiful. And I super encourage people to pick up, of course, Metamorphosis. This is the one place you can get the story. And it's just such a lovely, lovely story. It has all this warmth in it. And we're going to talk all about that. But I love how you touch in your excerpt on these cultural values and connections and relationships and how they're, you know, the daughter is helping the mother through the new technology and all of that. And we're recording this in the wake of the election here in America. And I'm seeing so many people talk about solarpunk values like those without using the actual word.
So everyone's reaching for connection to family and friends and refocusing on local ways, local culture, to help mitigate the harms and to prepare for the unknown and the known disasters looming ahead of us. So I think it's an instinctive response to turn to each other in times of uncertainty and crisis. It's a good instinct, but it's also very much what all these hopeful climate fiction stories generally embody, but especially yours.
Cabbage Koora spans time and the climate crisis and threads family and food and dance and ritual as the connections that bind us through generations. And I think of those bonds and family as the basic unit of resilience in the face of adversity. Were you thinking in terms of resiliency when you wrote this piece? I would like to hear more about that and tell me more about the messages you would like readers to hear in the story.
Sanjana
I love this question and I love how you talk about solarpunk as a tool for resilience and a really relevant tool, like you said, especially now when I wrote Cabbage Koora, the reason it's A Prognostic Autobiography, which is a term I just totally made up, I basically sat down to write a story for Imagine 2200's climate fiction contest, right? And I was like, at first I was like, I'm gonna write some crazy cool story about technology versus humans in like 2100. And then I realized I just don't know anything about any of that.
And they always say, write what you know. So I was like, what do I actually know? And I feel like the only thing that I'm actually any kind of authority on is my own life. And the other part of that, which relates to resilience is I think when I was exploring themes around the story and approaching writing it, I was feeling a lot of climate anxiety because writing even climate fiction, have to really be familiar with the non-fiction reality of what's going on and what is projected to happen and what has happened and all of the above. And I think for me writing this story was a way of wringing that sponge of anxiety because there is so much we can't control and to me resilience is about wayfinding through things that might cause grief or anger or uncertainty. And for me writing a story where I was starting with my real life in the first sort of segment of the story, which takes place in 2023. And then I was projecting what my life might be like when I'm a mother and when I'm a grandmother. It was a way of wayfinding for me through the uncertainty of what the future holds.
And I think I very much to your point on resilience and to your question, I was very much like, okay, well, if things go poorly, what will survive and how will I survive? And the first things that came to mind were the things that bring me joy, which are my family and friends, my relationship to food, my relationship to dance and culture. And the last piece I'll say on that too, is that this kind of resilience is not new for many communities around the world. And that's another thing that I was kind of tapping into is that. For example, Indigenous communities around the world have had to tap into resilience in the face of these systems for hundreds of years. I often hear this idea that Native people are post-apocalyptic people because they've gone through an apocalypse and they're still here, they're still surviving. And I thought about in my own life, what are ways that I've gone through the things that I might be afraid of for the future. And one of those things is like separation from family and separation from land, which is something that as someone living in diaspora I've already gone through. Like I already have to call my grandmother if I want to talk to her. I only see her once a year, once every other year. So the idea that when I'm a grandmother that might be the relationship that I have to my granddaughter is very bittersweet because I would love to have everyone I love around me but the story was a way of being like okay even if my family has to move away from me for whatever reason we'll still find ways to be family.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Yeah, no, I love all of that. And I love particularly the idea of being a post-apocalyptic people, Indigenous people have, and that's true increasingly for the southern state of Brazil or all of Pakistan. Like practically as a people, these areas sort of have micro climate disasters that are causing that. I have a friend in North Carolina who's coming out of seven weeks of no water.
You know, so this is increasingly becoming not just a historical thing that maybe a whole people have survived, but our present reality. And I was just thinking as you were talking, it was pinging really hard for me, like my own struggles right now to deal with the aftermath. And I'm hearing a lot of people trying to figure out what's the way forward.
But, and as you say, wayfinding by knowing what is important and people immediately reach for family. But one thing that I kind of realized here just in the last couple of days was that, you know, I've lived through four years of a Trump presidency and I happen to have spent the last four years after that really digging into climate resilience and what does that look like because I could see it coming. And so like between those two sorts of mini periods of my own personal life, I'm like, okay, actually you have already grappled with a lot of what you are now going to face both of those things together, because now we're doing both of those. And what is really resonating for me is that the things that I'd already identified as being family and friends and connections and little resiliency pods, whether it's small or slightly larger, if we can grow that to be larger community structures, which some cultures already have, but others do not. And a lot of us are super isolated. I already had identified those as climate resilience tools. And then I'm like, those are also tools for resiliency in the face of fascism. Same kind of thing. It's just, you know, resiliency is resiliency, because it's baked in: this is how you renew and this is how you stay centered and grounded and then can work to face whatever the thing is.
And so I love all of this. I love that we're talking about this in this moment and your story is so perfect for it. So the getting back to your story: food and dance, two joyful things. A they’re key parts of your story. And it strikes me that they're very embodied ways that we can express care and joy and pleasure. And I also noticed that you cite adrienne maree brown's Pleasure Activism in your bio, which I haven't read, but is high on my list. I keep seeing this book pop up a lot lately. So I know people are coming back to it if they haven't already read it. And I also noticed that your work in reclaiming the outdoors for women of color is likewise a very experiential thing. So I'd love to hear more about that embodied activism that you're doing and your thoughts on brown's book and how that informs your work.
Sanjana
Thank you for that question. That feels like such a beautiful weaving of so many influences and expressions that I've gotten to explore in my career so far. First of all, her book, put it right at the top of your list. It's so good. And I think you would really, you know, in what we're talking about today and a lot of the thoughts that we've shared coming into this podcast, I feel like you would find a lot of resonance in the way that she looks at activism and the way that she sees it as… it's like pleasure is a right and what we're fighting for is our wellness and our right to wellness and pleasure and joy and we also need to infuse our movements with those things.
I really love her work because I think it really reminds us that our… like the revolution starts within, you know, and in order to be involved in things and places that you care about and movements that you care about, you have to find ways to sustain yourself as well. And to remember what we're fighting for. I think about even a lot of the really, really difficult images that we're seeing coming from Gaza right now. And I'm thinking about how sometimes the images that strike me most are the ones that people share of the way they experienced home before all of this really escalated, whether it's a sunset in Gaza or in the West Bank or a family having tea together, just those moments. I'm like, that is what we're fighting for. And I think about that when you when you ask about embodiment and pleasure activism. Those things, it's so important to remember the beauty of life, because that is why we fight in these movements. We're not fighting just against something. We're fighting for something and I think that's really what I remember through being outdoors, through studying adrienne maree brown's pleasure activism. I'm remembering what we're fighting for not just the heaviness of what we're fighting against.
I find that that is a very renewable energy because it's a way of just keeping yourself locked in and keeping yourself in the movement space even when things get really hard.
Susan Kaye Quinn
I love that term renewable energy. I'm so gonna steal that and use that. You need to find your renewable energy source and channel it. That's so great. I love it.
Sanjana
Please do. Right? Because it's like we're fighting these extractive systems we can't be extracting from ourselves while we're doing that.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Yeah.
Sanjana
I think there's obviously an extent to which we don't always have control over that because the systems are so powerful. There are ways in which we sometimes just have to extract from ourselves to survive. And I think a lot of working class people feel that more. I think a lot of women and people of color feel that more. And that's why it's harder to have those identities and to stay in these fights. But it's also why it's so essential and why you see working class people and women and people of color mobilized always, first, even when they're experiencing the brunt of the system. They're always the first out there. So I think there's something to learn from that as well.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Yeah, hugely. And the thing about the forgetting too that it reminds me of and in contrast to the remembering is… I think about like when I've been depressed because I've had depressive episodes in my life and when I've been afraid, which is, I don't know, it feels like all the time, you can like, it's not just that you forget, it's almost like the world seems impossibly flat. Like it is impossible that there will ever be joy again. It is impossible, you know, when you're depressed, it's almost like a symptom of depression is the belief that it can never change. And that is a trap that people get stuck in for sure. You know, I mean, it's not, I'm not trying to imply that joy is the cure for depression, because obviously that's a real psychological issue that has many, many treatments and approaches, but I find for me personally, when I start to feel things like that, the sneaking belief that there can never be joy again, that's how I know I'm getting into a bad place that I need to not be in. And I need to, like you say, do the renewable energy, power up again with some joy and pleasure and just living life in a way that… whatever way is accessible for you because we all have different, you know, things that we're able to do. So it's, it's rough going, but gosh, we have a lot of great tools here.
I want to get back to your story and your work here. One thing I also noticed is I was checking you out because the first time I encountered you, “you” in quotes, was through your story. Okay, which I actually kind of love sometimes because I feel like we leave imprints of ourselves on our work that only readers can really detect sometimes. And so when I encounter a person first through their work, I'm like, this is a person I want to know. And because I'm an author with a podcast, I can actually invite them. And sometimes they even say yes, come on. And it's like fantastic.
But anyway, so I was looking at your website and you've got a lot of great film work, which I encourage listeners to go check out, see some of it for yourselves. But I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong, but Metamorphosis is your first published solarpunk story.
Sanjana
Yes.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Okay, but you also have a blog and “auto-ethnographic newsletter”, again in quotes, because I don't know what that means, which is about embodying change that we want to see in the world through the lens of sensuous socio-ecology, another amazing term. So there are several items in there that are new to me. Can you orient us on what the newsletter is about and where you see your writing going as part of this work that you're doing?
Sanjana
Yeah, I love that question. Sometimes the terms don't make sense because I made them up.
But auto-ethnographic, I can actually explain is actually a term. That one, it's kind of similar to this idea. There's a through line that I'm seeing as you're talking, realizing, reflecting on my own work. I'm like, this is a through line. But autoethnographic is basically an anthropological term where you are using. So ethnographic would be if you are kind of going into a community and like learning about that community. And autoethnographic is a way of doing that, but like using yourself as a vessel almost. And so it's kind of similar in sense to autobiographical, the difference is that you're using yourself as a vehicle to understand society and your perspective as a vehicle to understand society or at least your view or your place in society. And I think the reason, yeah I'm really realizing now that this is a through line, it's like because I feel for me and this is maybe connecting back to your first question too, a lot of the writing that I do, whether it's fiction, nonfiction, through the newsletter, which I'll explain to you in a second, but a lot of the writing is an effort to... to sort of catalyze participation. And I always hope that if I'm writing about my life, that people that I know will be like, I know Sanjana. And if she's thinking about these things in her life and how they're gonna affect her, then they're probably gonna affect me too, because like that's my friend. And so if this is the world she's gonna live in in 2047, it's probably the world I'm gonna be living in in 2047.
So it's almost a way of like… part of the message is... to sort of catalyze that level of introspection, that level of inspiring others to also look at their own lives and be like, well, what is my life gonna look like? And how am I gonna move through the changes that are inevitably gonna come in a way that engenders resilience and engenders not just survival, but thriving, right?
So the newsletter, Garmi—Garmi means heat in Hindi. And it's sort of a, it's a bit of a cheeky newsletter. The tagline is the planet is getting hotter, but so am I. And the idea again is to be like, all right, we can rise to the challenge, right? Like the planet is getting hotter, but we can also rise to that challenge by sharpening our own tools, by sharpening our muscle for participation. And so every couple of weeks in this newsletter, I just explore a different topic that's on my mind, relating to climate. Sometimes it doesn't feel like it's related to climate, but it always is. Like I did one of my favorite ones and one of the toughest ones that I did was with my mom and we talked about grief and grief is a skill and grief is a necessary skill, especially when it comes to metabolizing what we might be seeing through climate crisis. And I think now that was a year ago that we did that. And I'm coming back to that newsletter now after the election and after everything that's been happening and just as I think about what's going to happen.
Yeah, I think for me writing is really a way to, I hope to sort of like offer myself and offer my own life as a thing that people can pick apart and examine and learn from hopefully, whether that's through whatever successes I have or whatever mistakes I make. I hope it's a way that people can reflect on their own lives and think about how they're gonna be impacted and not only how they're gonna be impacted, but how they can create impact.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Absolutely brilliant. I think I see, I haven't read your newsletter and I haven't necessarily watched your stuff, but just in talking to you and in reading your story, there's a very intimate feel to that. And I feel like you come to it with a real like open-hearted, this is who I am and we're gonna talk in a very intimate way about feelings and relationships. And that's a beautiful entree into this.
And especially in your story where you have the character go through different stages of her life. So we can really relate to that. Like we all have had previous stages and we know the other stages are coming. Sometimes we don't want to think about that, but it is coming. And so there's such a wonderful open warmth and intimacy in what you're trying, what I hear you trying to do with the newsletter and I can see it in the story and I think that actually plugs into what my next question was about
I have a strong belief in the power of the arts to pull people into the climate fight and part of it is that intimacy where the arts they just engage you. Sometimes they bring you relief, sometimes they bring you joy, sometimes they give you ideas like models or blueprints for a better world but overall they're just like… in our world where everything is trying to grab your attention, the arts continue to be a not toxic way to do that. It's not the doom scrolling, it's not these other toxic attention grabbing tools or techniques that are actively destroying a lot of our society. The arts remain a way of renewable energy, actually. See, I knew I'm gonna use that word so much.
Sanjana
Yeah.
Susan Kaye Quinn
So overall, I feel like climate+arts is something that is really important, but is barely getting started. And there's still a ton of resistance to… like even you mentioned when you were like, okay, I'm starting to write this story and gosh, it's so overwhelming. There's just like so much to know and you have to like actually engage. I mean, to create these things, you have to engage and that's hard. So it's as much for us as for the readers. So there's still tons of resistance to that. And maybe even more, I'm not really sure how this is gonna play out with the election. I know that climate is gonna take a huge hit. That much is obvious. What exactly that means is not clear. How people will respond? Will they double down on their own personal efforts or their efforts at activism or…? That's very unclear to me right now.
But I feel like maybe the arts is a pathway into that. And especially as I'm watching sort of like the automatic response that people are having, the instinctive turn to community and mutual aid and local work in the wake of the election. I mean, those are all solarpunk values, like we said at the top of the pot.
So I would love to hear your thoughts about climate+arts as a climate solution and what you think the potential is for arts in leading the way forward in this time that we are now in.
Sanjana
Yeah, that's a great question. I come from a studio art background. That was my major in college. And I think I have a very complicated relationship with art because, or The Arts, depending on what we reference when we say the arts. Well, I'll preface by saying I think everything has its place, right? I think that the art in museums and art that is really avant-garde and really pushing limits is really important. And that disruption is really important. I also noticed that oftentimes it's very inaccessible. And so I think the complicated relationship that I have is in the sense of what we…how we approach what counts as art. I think that that's why I really turned to writing because I think I came from a very purist background when it comes to studio art. Like art belongs in museums, artists belong in residencies and that kind of an idea and that a Hollywood film can never be art because it's mainstream and that binary.
And then I went all the way to the other end of the spectrum where I worked in advertising and I wound up, I found myself speaking out a lot on social media and it was like the most mainstream of the creative industries. And so I've seen kind of both ends of that spectrum. And I think what I'm really interested in is how do we make the radical relatable? So almost like bridging those two things going from what I see, I think, I think that's not for everyone. I think everyone has their place.
As Deepa Iyer says, in the ecosystem of social change, there are the disruptors who should be out there pushing the envelope because I learn from them, right? And then there are the people who are doing the more mainstream stuff and I learned from them how do you make disruptive ideas more popular? So I think that's what's really interesting for me when I think about climate and arts is I think we have a really untapped creative opportunity to make climate action feel like the upgrade to our lives that it is rather than the sacrifice that it is not, right? I was just listening to Naomi Klein's book, This Changes Everything, and she says about Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, she's like, the truth that climate crisis is something we have to do something about is only inconvenient if you're perfectly happy with the way the world currently is. But most of us are not. And so it's actually not an inconvenient truth. It's a great opportunity to do something. It is the fact that fossil fuels and big money have controlled the narrative for so long that is the only reason that we think of activism as a drag. It's the only reason that we don't have more people signing up to say, put me in, right? Like, and I think that is really something that I see climate and art tackling, or I hope to see it tackling, and I hope to tackle with my writing is, making climate action the sexiest place to be, right? That's like reclaiming the narrative from people that would rather you see it as difficult and a slog. And sometimes it is those things, but we don't need to advertise it that way, right? Like, I think that's, we have to learn how to message better. And I think that's what art can do.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Yeah, no, absolutely. And I like what you say about how there's a big untapped opportunity. I've been beating that drum for a long time about how storytelling is just absent in this climate, hopeful solution space. We storytell all day long about the apocalypse. And there's certainly a place for that, especially as people are experiencing things. But we somehow, we don't also tell the story of the real apocalypses that are happening, like say in North Carolina, my friend is just like feeding me story after story after story of all of her neighbors coming together, people coming from out of state, everybody helping out. And it's just this tremendous, like I'm just in tears, not of sadness, but of joy in the middle of this disaster. And at the same time, it's really, really hard on her.
You know, so like I'm grieving for my friend. I feel awful that I can't help more than, you know, the little bit that I can do. And so there's like this secondary grief that we go through and just like a whole... There's a whole bunch of stuff there, but we're not seeing that in our fiction the way that we should. So I love that you're writing. I love that you're finding that as... It was funny when you were talking about like the pure arts and then the commercial arts and somewhere in between. It feels like every artist's journey, I swear. I have heard so many people make that whole journey and then finally come around to how do I do my part? And I think there is huge potential, not just in writing these stories, that's obviously the part I've landed on because it's in my wheelhouse, but... I see a lot of potential for activism with the arts. And I feel like I'm just at the beginning of really understanding the potential for that. And now you add in this ramp up of fascist forces that are trying to hurt people and trying to stop climate, advances in climate change fight. So that adds a whole nother level of it. Now you're looking at protest art, you're looking at resistance art, which can also be climate art because that's one of the things we're resisting is the destruction of the climate or the destruction of the planet. I guess that was like the end of the question, but I feel like it's just like the beginning.
I might need to have you on to talk about this more, but tell me in particular for you, where are you headed with that? I know, for me, okay. I'm sorry, I'm like all over the place here…
Sanjana
No, I get it. The brain, the synapses are just everywhere.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Yes, you're doing this to me with your wonderful ideas!
Sanjana
It happens to me all the time too.
Susan Kaye Quinn
So, okay, for me, I'm working on a novel that's about plants and families and how we have to renegotiate our relationships with both. That is part of it. I also have other ideas that are part of it. I have a short story that I want to write that is part of it. And so that's very much my focus, but I'm also doing the podcast because I want us to talk about the big gaping hole because I can't fill that hole by myself. So part of my activism is getting people, encouraging people to pick up the pen, write the stories, whether it's for publication or not, do the visioning, so that you can start to engage in a way that comes in joy and not fear and not disaster.
So that's where I'm heading and I feel like I'm still to have so much more that I can do with that… that's more activism. Where are you now and where are you heading with your art, climate, activism stuff?
Sanjana
Yeah, well first of all, everything that you're doing and everything you're cooking up sounds so exciting. I'm really excited about your novel. You'll have to keep me updated. And also, obviously, very excited about your podcast because I'm here. So very cool. And it's really cool to meet other people that are other storytellers that are also sort of in this caravan with me, you know, on the same path here. So that's really that's really awesome to hear. And I hope I wish you all the luck in those projects.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Thank you.
Sanjana
Yeah, of course. I think on my end, I have a couple of different things happening. Number one with Garmi. I'm going to be sort of exploring more modalities beyond the newsletter, moving a bit into music, moving a bit into fashion, interested in sports, all of this through a climate lens. And so you had asked, I think about sensual socio-ecology and the way that I define that is through, this is coming from influences of many other people who've kind of taught me the meanings of these words, but I sort of put them together to mean the practice of paying attention with your senses as a way of approaching climate action. So re-embodying in our bodies as a way of re-embodying to our planet Earth. And I think a lot about, for me, Garmin is really interested in making the climate movement mainstream. So I'm interested in what are these different modalities that drive mainstream culture. The newsletter is something I always will love and will do, but I want to expand beyond that into a few more…more ways of storytelling. I think a podcast is going to be one of them, so I'm taking notes from the way that you so beautifully curate everything.
Then the other thing I'm working on is a series, and it's sort of in like the sci-fi fantasy world, but all the allegories are around extractionism, and that's been a really cool way for me. I'm sure you resonate with this. I think that as I notice fears or questions coming up, around the real world that we live in, it's a really powerful exercise to take those things and explore them in a fictional setting where you can kind of solutions build or problem solve with the suspension of disbelief in ways that you can't really do in the real world. And then maybe once your imagination muscle is working enough through those fictional worlds, you can take those, the ethos of those solutions and make them real in the real world. So it's kind of like that cyclical way of using imagination as an actual hard skill and a tool for activism. So those are kind of the two writing projects. And I really hope like through both of those, especially through Garmi, that I can also help create opportunities for people to leave the house and be outside together, like at mutual aid, volunteer moments and things like that versus just reading about this stuff because I always think about that too as a writer I'm like how do my words leave the page and how do these things become real beyond, I mean shifting consciousness is important but how does shifting consciousness translate into changing behavior and catalyzing action that's always something I think a lot of us play with.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Oh man, I love all of what you're doing. You're going to have to keep me in the loop on your progress on that because very exciting. And I love especially your sensory connection where like the way we mediate or interact with our environment is literally through our senses. It's literally an embodiment. We tend to get all up in our heads and especially as writers, we tend to get up in our heads and readers, right?
Sanjana
Right.
Susan Kaye Quinn
But if we're doing our jobs well, like as you did in your story, I felt the dance. You know, I felt the desire to eat the cabbage koora. You know, like we can tap into that sensory connection because we are just manipulating the brain to be in this other space. And like you say, bring that ethos of whatever the solutions are that we're playing with in our fictional realm bring that into reality. And I think it works at two levels. I feel like people definitely take ideas. They definitely take inspiration. It doesn't have to be a blueprint, although it can be. But they'll take that for sure, and the mind's going, and they'll come up with ideas that work in the real world. But sometimes it's just like the emotional release. Like, okay, here's a world where things actually work. And like, there is joy and like, it's a release and then it's like a hunger. Like I want that. I want to feel that joy, you know?
Sanjana
Yeah. I love that.
Susan Kaye Quinn
And so I want to spark the hunger and I think you are like really keyed into that elemental like embodied feeling of wanting, craving, desiring better. And we deserve it, like you were saying before, like we deserve pleasure. Like it is a right to have a life filled with joy. It's a crime that we don't have more people able to access that more frequently, you know? So I love so much of what you're doing. Thank you for doing that work.
All right, we're getting towards the end. So I'm going to do my rapid round of three questions that I do with every podcast. So let's dive into that. What hopeful climate fiction have you read recently that you would recommend?
Sanjana
Well, Metamorphosis, for sure.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Of course!
Sanjana
Of course. I think other than Metamorphosis, I wouldn't necessarily call this hopeful, but I think it is powerful. And it's another speculative fiction anthology called Palestine +100. It's Palestinian authors who imagine Palestine in 2048. And I think just even the act of imagining that way is really, it's just an indicator of hope.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Yeah, wow, I can imagine that would be a heavy one, but also inspiring. Thank you for telling us about that.
All right, next question. What do you do to stay grounded and hopeful in our precarious and fast changing world? And I tell you, every time I ask this question, there's always something new that's like precarious or fast changing. This is no exception. We are there again. So do tell us.
Sanjana
My gosh. Yeah, well, that is a question I've been asking myself a lot lately. I think the biggest thing for me is that sensory socio-ecology portion where I try, every time I notice myself getting a little loopy or ungrounded, I try to just move through all five senses or whatever senses I have access to that day or whatever senses someone else might have access to every body is different, but just noticing like one to three things that I see, one to three things that I hear, one to three things that I can feel or touch, and same thing with smell and maybe even taste. So just coming back into my biological body I think is really helpful.
Susan Kaye Quinn
I love that, it's such a grounding, like almost, what's the word I'm trying for? I don't wanna say meditation…
Sanjana
It is sort of, yeah.
Susan Kaye Quinn
It is sort of a meditation, but it's more than that. I really like that. I'm gonna have to give that a try, actually.
Sanjana
Yeah, it's so easy to, you know, like you can really just do it anywhere and it takes one to five minutes depending on how intensely you want to do it.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Right, and the beautiful thing is you have to focus, right? That's the key, that's the connection to meditation that was making in my brain because you have to pay attention to this particular sense, but now you're grounding it in the body. So, love that, love it.
Okay, and then the third question is, and we kind of covered this a little bit, but what's next for you? Are you working on another actual story or novel? Doesn't sound like you have actual novel or stories and we'll put links to whatever you have in the notes so people can definitely find you and check stuff out. But what immediately are you working on?
Sanjana
So I am working on a series, hopefully a trilogy, and that is sort of the next big project.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Wait, no, so when you said series before, for some reason I heard like web series, but no, you're talking like a novel series. '
Sanjana
No, like a written series. Yeah, yeah, A novel series, yeah. A sci-fi fantasy novel series, yeah.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Fantastic. Fantastic, because like...
Sanjana
Nothing to show for it yet, but soon.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Well, you know, this is the nature of novels. They take a long time and they're a lot of work.
Sanjana
Exactly. I'm learning. I'm learning that.
Susan Kaye Quinn
We will definitely look for that coming from you and thank you so much for this has been just a delightful discussion and I can't wait to see more work from you because you've got it. You've got the good stuff. We need more of that from you.
Sanjana
Thank you so much. you again for having me and for curating such a beautiful space. I really appreciate it. And it felt really medicinal to get to chat with you today.
Susan Kaye Quinn
I'm glad to hear that. Take care.
Sanjana
You too.
Bright Green Futures 2024 Anthology
Since I’ve had all these wonderful authors on the pod, I figured what better way to get more stories written than to ask the experts to write more? Right now, we're finishing up edits and getting the cover ready, which I hope to reveal soon. And we're planning some fun launch activities to get the word out there.
COVER REVEAL COMING SOON
Make sure you’re subscribed (FREE!) to be the first to know when all that happens. (And tell your friends!)
Check out our growing list of recommended stories on the main substack page— great place to do your holiday shopping!
Solarpunk Starter Pack
Metamorphosis is part of the Solarpunk Starter Pack that Bright Green Futures gave away in November—the giveaway is over, but these books would make great gifts for the holidays! You can find them on Bright Green Future’s Bookshop.org page, just for the starter pack.
LINKS Ep. 23: Creating Connection with Solarpunk with Author Sanjana Sekhar
Metamorphosis collection (published by Milkweed Editions)
Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown
Social Change Now by Deepa Iyer
This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein
Sanjana Sekhar (website) Climate Storytelling: Author, Filmmaker, & Communications Strategist
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