In this episode, I chat with Renan Bernardo about how grief weaves through many of his stories, but that, for him, writing solarpunk means bringing readers from those dark depths to a brighter place.
Text Transcript:
Susan Kaye Quinn
Hello friends!
Welcome to Bright Green Futures, Episode Six, Exploring Grief in Climate Fiction with author Renan Bernardo. I'm your host, Susan K. 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 to Renan Bernardo, Nebula-finalist author of Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Renan is from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and his stories appear in Apex Magazine, Podcastle, EscapePod, Daily Science Fiction, and more, as well as being published in multiple languages, including German, Italian, Japanese, and Portuguese. I cannot wait to share Renan's stories with you. Renan, thank you so much for coming on the pod today.
Renan Bernardo
Thank you for having me here, Susan. It's a great honor.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Oh, thank you! And this is not the first time we've done things together, as we were saying before the pod started, that we have done a couple of things, including the Hopepunk Panel, and we always have such great conversations. So I am very excited for today. And congratulations on being a Nebula finalist! I saw that you're the first Brazilian Nebula finalist. So that's exciting. And it just happened this last week, right?
Renan Bernardo
Yes. Last Thursday.
Susan Kaye Quinn
So for our listeners, Renan's Nebula Finalist story is A Short Biography of a Conscious Chair and we'll put a link in the notes so you can find it online. It's such an interesting point of view and beautifully written as all your stories are, but it's not climate fiction. So we're not gonna focus on your award-winning story today, but readers should definitely check it out.
I did notice that Conscious Chair has a thematic element of grief, something I see in several of your stories. I just love how you give that grief all the room and honesty it deserves. This story we're going to focus on today is also thoroughly drenched in grief and healing, which I feel is just so important in storytelling about the climate.
There's so much eco-grief that we're barely talking about that just sort of floats out there unacknowledged. And I feel so strongly that in order to heal the earth and our relationship with it, we're going to need a lot of healing ourselves. So this story that we're going to talk about is A Shoreline of Oil and Infinity. And I believe you've got an excerpt for us.
Renan Bernardo
Yes. So this was published in Escape Pod and as Susan said it's called A Shoreline of Oil and Infinity.
She brushes off the excess of crusted oil from the bot, scanning her fingerprint to open its main compartment. A wave breaks on the shore, sprinkling on her face and the bot. “Let’s see what you have here.”
The tatuí whirs—almost purrs. She plucks out the cylindrical cell from its rounded back. More darkened water. She doesn’t read the full report, but she can guess what it contains pretty well. Heavy metals, volatile organic compounds, hydrocarbons… All there is to know in Barra Nova’s waters these days. Layers of oil expand across both sides of the straight shoreline, coating the once gilded sand, patches of darkness suffusing the air with the stink of hydrogen sulfide that in the past made the kids call that beach The Coast of Broken Eggs. André’s kids—Vitória always thinks of them as her stepbrother’s children, though not one of them was his by birth.
Vitória tucks the tatuí’s cell and the biome packs into her backpack and passes it over her shoulders.
“Thank you, little one. Add that sample’s report to what we have and update our graphs.” She taps the tatuí’s shell and it beeps, a strip of light gleaming blue along its surface. She sprays a water-sorbent-dispersant solution over it and wipes away the oil smudges from the bot the best she can. Not enough. Never is. Oil impregnates everything, from the sand to the waters, from her tatuís to her grimy fingernails and her greasy curly hair. At home, it isn’t rare to find small patches besmirching the parquet flooring, breadcrumbs leading her back to the beach, back to her work. And if she could look, there would probably be oil within her soul, too.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Gosh, so good, so good. This story, as you say, was published by EscapePod, which means it's available in text and audio for listeners. And I probably should have said this upfront. The story is set in Saquarema—I don't know if I'm saying that correctly—a real town in Rio de Janeiro state that suffers from a future major oil spill with devastating consequences for the environment, including these tiny crustaceans, the tatuí, who drill holes in the sand, and in your story are replaced by these bots, the ones that she's cleaning these oil stains off of, which… there's such poetry in that whole image. I love it. But let's talk about the grief in this story. There's the loss of the pristine beaches, the loss of the real tatuí. All that grief is mirrored in the main character's loss of her stepbrother, Andre. So why do you think this theme of grief keeps calling to you in your stories? And what do you want your characters, and by extension your readers, to find as they process through all these different kinds of grief?
Renan Bernardo
I think that grief is an important and essential part of the climate catastrophe. And I think that people will miss not only their dearest ones. Grief is not only related to death. And with climate change and all the tragedies that come with it, I think that also places will be... people will miss places that will be no more. Maybe a beach that used to go to a shop, where used to buy groceries and a home, perhaps somewhere you have lived before. Not only that, but just places that you pass by or people that you even don't know, but you saw those people come in and going.
In the story you can see that in the form of the kids that disappear suddenly because their families go away. Or the tourists because it is a touristy town. And in the story it is no more because the tourists have no more interest in this part because the beaches are polluted. So this is also grief. This is present in climate tragedy, and I think climate fiction has to portray grief that way because entire ways of living will be grieved and not only places and people but ways of living will be missed by people. So I like to show that in my characters and in my plots, and I believe this story has all of those, and they are summarized in the absence of the tatuí, which is a real crustacean that lives on beaches. And when some environment is polluted, the tatuí suddenly vanishes. So here in Rio, I remember as a child seeing lots of those tatuís in the beaches around here. And then they suddenly started vanishing and then nowadays it's very, very rare to spot one on the beach. So it's a crustacean that is symbolic, that I think that represents so well what's happening with the world.
Susan Kaye Quinn
It does really capture that. We like to have cute little creatures around. We attach emotionally to cute little things. And I think your tatuí in the story, where she brings it back as these little mechanical things that have purpose, they go out and they clean and they analyze and they do important things. But it's like she's trying to restore something that you can't restore without actually addressing the problem. There is no substitute, not really, for some of these things that we're going to lose. And I think sometimes people don't know what to do with that in reality. Like in the real world, what do I do with the fact that I used to hike all the time when I was a kid in Yosemite, which is this beautiful national park in California. And now it's changing and it's not the same as when I was a kid. And, you know, it's still there. You can still go and see some of the natural beauty or a lot of natural beauty, but it's threatened. And I think people don't really know how to grapple with that, how to give voice to it. And so your story is so wonderful that way, because it gives a tangible thing to it with a little tatuí. You're like, oh yes, I would miss that. And it's a crustacean, which isn't like necessarily warm and fuzzy, but it's kind of cute and small and runs around and you can see how to attach to it.
I feel like all your stories have such richness and depth of emotion in them. And that's something that jumped out at me at the very first story of yours that I read, which is When It's Time to Harvest, which was in the Imagine 2200 collection. And then also in what remains my favorite story of yours, which is Look to the Sky, My Love in Solarpunk magazine, which is a very sad story, but also just wonderfully cathartic in the processing of the grief that goes on there. And so I really recommend people read these, but those two stories in particular bring grief back to kind of a healing level by the end. As does this one with A Shoreline of Oil and Infinity, there's a little touch of healing at the end. And so I think you can kind of say that's the hopeful part. But how do you, as a writer, how do you balance going to those dark depths of grief and the need for healing things that sometimes you cannot fix and you cannot change and still reach to that hopeful ending, which I think is what is different about hopeful climate fiction is that we don't just leave you in the depths. We bring you back up to “this is how we move through it.” Is it difficult as a writer to do that? Or do you find it just happens with each story in its own way? Or tell me a little about your process there.
Renan Bernardo
I think it varies depending on the story. I rarely write complete dystopias where everything is dark and hopeless. I always try to convey some sense of hope and resilience and healing in my stories. Even with this Nebula finalist story, which is a fantasy story that has nothing to do with climate fiction, you can notice a touch of hope in the end. Even if it's a sad story, and even in that story that you mentioned, Look to the Sky, My Love, that came out in Solarpunk Magazine, it is a profoundly sad story about death. You see that there is no way around it for the protagonist, but it ends with a touch of hope in the sense that the environment where the protagonist is in and the party and everything that's happening around him sort of feeds him with a kind of hope or at least the realization that there will be some light for him at the end of the tunnel, there will be some light, there will be some hope, there is some healing, even if it's not present right now.
For my solarpunk and climate fiction stories, I think hope is essential because without hope or healing, the story breaks. The core of solarpunk for me is hope. It's what moves the protagonist forward and also what makes the story make sense. Because if there is no hope, there is nothing we're fighting for. I believe there is always something worth fighting for. This is true for the real world as well. So even if things are completely broken, I think the hope of picking up the pieces might be enough as a motivation. I always try to see it somewhere, to put it some way in my stories because…I like reading stories that are bleak and dark and hopeless, but when I write stories that are dark in nature, it's very difficult for me to not put some hope there in some form.
Susan Kaye Quinn
That's the power, I feel like, of your stories, is you're not afraid to go to those darker parts of the soul and the grief and the just the existential horror of some of this. And I think a lot of us get stuck there and don't know how to climb back out. And I think that really is, for your stories in particular because they are so emotionally rich, and you find that way back to hopeful and it's earned. Those story endings are very… there's no easy outs or anything like that. It is so emotionally earned that it is very cathartic. Taking people through that full cycle, I feel like that's the essence of what, as you say, your solarpunk has to do that because that's what it is. That's the essence of what those kinds of stories do. And it's why we even have this podcast is because not everybody knows about those kinds of stories being out there and they really can help with this difficult time that we're living in. So I love it.
I wanted to circle back once again to A Shoreline of Oil Infinity because there's a fantastic line in that story that I want to call attention to. One character says, “We have to occupy the evil places and make them good.” That's such a powerful statement. I stopped literally in the story and went back and read that again, because I was like, Oh my, this is good. It does actually get repeated in the story, and the character kind of struggles with the idea of what that means. Can you tell me a little bit about what motivated that idea that we have to occupy the evil places and make them good? And what's the alternative to that, I guess, that we abandon them? And why would you not do that?
Renan Bernardo
I think that in the end this idea of occupying evil places and making them good is part of a process of healing. And you sort of have to occupy spaces to bring them life, to make them kind of useful. This idea comes from other contexts here in Rio that some people talk about, meaning that people have to be present in some public spaces, maybe places that were abandoned by the state and the private sector, or places that there are a lot of crime. People say that you have to occupy these public spaces so crime won't happen anymore. That place will be valued. If people are present in these places where the state and the private sector don't care about, I think people have the power to change the meaning of that place. And people can use that space for something, recreation, maybe play games or taking a walk, doing work to preserve it, like gardening, dealing with tall grass or watering the flowers, cleaning up the street, doing those sorts of things. I think this is a practical good in a place that could be completely abandoned. In the end it's all about transformation.
In the story the kids have tried to transform the abandoned supertanker into something for them. They turned it into a place of prayer, but also fun. They created their adventures there. They tried to make it a place that contained meaning for them. And it was kind of a resurrection of a place that otherwise would be completely abandoned. And abandonment, I think it's something that will happen a lot with climate change. So it's something that people need to fight against abandonment, all kinds of abandonment. I'm talking about abandonment of places, but also of people, of communities, entire environments. That's, I think, one of the things that I want to bring with this line. We have to occupy evil places and make them good. It's that. It's to prevent abandonments.
It's like that with Victoria on the beach, the beach is completely polluted by oil, but she's there even if alone or with her bots, she's there occupying that beach and making it a place that is not abandoned because she's there. She's there for it, she's there, we're healing it somehow and doing something for it.
Susan Kaye Quinn
There's so much power in that. My brain is just churning with ideas as you're talking because you're hitting on so many different wonderful pieces. The whole idea of resurrection, of how we have death, but then mushrooms will come and restore. There's a real cycle of life to that, where if you're not present through the whole… you can't stop at the death part. Death is not the end, it's the beginning of the next stage of the cycle. And we as humanity have been so disconnected from nature, having this sort of conquering attitude rather than an integrating attitude, rather than that we're part of the cycle. We're breaking the cycles. We're breaking a lot of the planet. And I think it's really important for us to put ourselves back into the story of that birth, death and rebirth kind of cycle, because then we can see that we're part of it.
Another piece that I was thinking about as you were talking, I feel very strongly that, wherever you are on the planet, whether it's Brazil or America or France or wherever you are, there are things that need to be done there. There are places and spaces and people locally to you, wherever you are, that your presence matters. And like you're saying, don't abandon those places. Don't give up on something, go to the spaces where you are and where the healing needs to happen and be part of the healing process. Those are just, they're such really powerful ideas. I love that you're integrating all that into a story. This is one of the reasons why your stories are so compelling to me, because they tackle all of this at once and sort of weave it together into these powerful images and emotional journeys that make me want to find out what can I do where I am, that will be present, will be restorative. How can my presence make a difference?
I think that's another disconnect that we get into a lot of times, especially with climate change, because it's so big and overwhelming, and it feels like we're so small and insignificant. But like your character on the beach… it will take a long time and she will not be able to do all of the work herself. She even has the little mechanical tatuí to help her out. But she's there. She's making… a small difference is objectively different than zero. And if we each lean into that and find our small differences that adds up in a serious, serious hurry. I love that.
I also want to point our readers, or listeners, to your new short story collection that's coming out called Different Kinds of Defiance by Android Press. And that should be published by the time this episode airs so people will be able to find it. This is like a collection of all my favorite Renan Bernardo stories, plus a couple that are previously unpublished or only published in Portuguese. And first of all, I want to make sure… I was just looking at the table of contents. Is that an accurate read of what's going on with those stories?
Renan Bernardo
Yeah, there will be three brand new stories, one of which was previously published in Portuguese.
Susan Kaye Quinn
I can't wait to read those for sure. And even the ones like I haven't read all of them, but I'm hoping that listeners when they're, you know, hearing this episode and they're listening to what these stories are like, you know, they will quickly become Renard Bernardo fans as well because this is these, these stories do a lot of what I love to see climate fiction and solar punk do.
So I'm curious and I know this is a terrible thing to ask, but which is your favorite story in the collection or at least which one would you really like readers to check out and read and can you tell us a little bit about it?
Renan Bernardo
It's very hard to pick a favorite child.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Yes.
Renan Bernardo
But I believe that I can mention The River That Passed Through My Life. It's the last story in the collection. It's the one that was previously published in Portuguese by Dame Blanche, which is a small press here in Brazil. And it's a climate fiction adventure set in the same same Rio de Janeiro as When It's Time to Harvest and Eight Steps to Steal a Yacht and Build a Hospital. So they share that same universe. This story is about a former teacher who won a lottery and left Rio to live in a space station that was built for the privileged. So basically people fled to the space and they built some space station when they saw that the world was crumbling, most of the cities were undergoing some sort of collapse, governments were failing, and so the rich built some space stations and fled to space. This former teacher, she's called Neía, and she decides to come back to Rio to visit a dear friend, and then she gets a job with a rich girl who is trying to collect historical artifacts from before the collapse. This one is very close to my heart and people here in Brazil really enjoyed it. And this explains in greater detail how Rio de Janeiro came to be in that state that you can see in some of my stories with the water level so high and the government failing and the city collapsing and people trying to come up to it and fight for it and change the city the best way they can. This story it shows that it takes more than just climate to ruin a city. It has this dark vein to it, it's a climate fiction story I like to say that it's a climate fiction story verging to solarpunk.
You read my story, When It's Time to Harvest. It's set in the same universe, but maybe 100 years in the future. So you can see a lot more hope in When It's Time to Harvest that will also be in the collection. And then you would see in this story, The River That Passed Through My Life. But this story is essential and it touches in some points that I think that are very important.
This character wants to come to Rio to bring something that she calls relics back to space. But to who does these things belong? Does she think the people living in space have the right to come here and take back the things to them? Or does it belong to the people that are living here and making a difference right here? This is one of the themes of the story.
Susan Kaye Quinn
It sounds amazing. I cannot wait to read it. And it brings up two things. First of all, I'm assuming that you wrote the Portuguese and the English versions. Like you didn't let somebody else translate your Portuguese story into English, correct?
Renan Bernardo
No, yeah, correct, it was myself.
Susan Kaye Quinn
I would assume so. And thank you for doing that because it's really important, I believe, for us in climate fiction to really get that wide diversity of stories. Readers who are reading in English tend to get a lot of stories that are set in English-primarily-speaking countries. That's kind of how that goes. I get that. But we really need to, especially in the climate fiction space, because it is not just an English-speaking country phenomenon, right? Stuff is happening everywhere and we really need to have those different perspectives. People like yourself who are bilingual, who can bring those stories to us, or publishers who hire translators to bring those stories to English, are doing a real service. They're really helping people in the English-speaking world to understand at a more deep cultural level, what is happening in different places. In some ways, every place is the same. Every place is going to have water and land and people and conflicts and governments and problems and pollution. Like everybody kind of has the same problems, but everybody has it in a different flavor. And that's another important message. Yes, Rio de Janeiro in your fictional universe has problems that I'm sure the Gulf of Mexico off of Houston has similar but different, right? Of course, the political systems are different and the people are different and the history is different. But at the same time, this idea of like, what gives you the right to take things up to space from this local place? This local place has its own people and history. If we're going to work local… that's another part of working local and recapturing that sense of place and connection to the land and connection to the history of your land and to understand where your people are from or whether maybe you're not from that. As you say, like a lot of abandonment is going to happen in climate change. There are places that are just going to become less habitable. And so people are going to move and there will be a lot of movement, a lot of displacement. So I think there will be a lot of people who actually become unconnected to their homes. And that's like a whole nother piece of it. There's so much richness in what we can explore with these stories.
I got a sense, now I haven't read your entire biography, but I got a sense you have actually a lot of publications in Portuguese that have not been translated to English. Is that true? And will you be doing more of that in the future?
Renan Bernardo
Yes, I have some, not that many because I've been focused on writing in English for quite a few years. But I have some. I have one piece of climate fiction that was written in Portuguese and that I never translated into English and never published also in Portuguese. It's completely unpublished. So that's one that I want to translate to English and try to publish it somewhere.
Susan Kaye Quinn
I would love to see that as well. I love that you have been making such an effort, again thank you for doing that sort of outreach to have a presence in the English-speaking science fiction world. And now obviously you've had a Nebula nom. There's a few people that think that they like your work. So that's fantastic. I hope we will be seeing more from you, but let me get to my rapid round that I like to do at the end of our podcast of three rapid questions.
The first one is, what helpful climate fiction have you read recently that you would recommend? And if it's in Portuguese, you can recommend that, but I might have to find a translator. And in English would probably be good too.
Renan Bernardo
I actually thought of Kelsea Yu, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing her name correctly, but it's a story called The Orchard of Tomorrow, published at Clarkesworld. And it's a beautiful story about friendship and comfort and about her repairing her friendship that was jeopardized by one friend taking a comfortable job working for the rich people and a rich company that hoarded a lot of food while part of the world starved. So that was a very beautiful and well-crafted story.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Nice. I will definitely put a link to that in our comments.
My next of the three is, what do you do to stay grounded and hopeful in our precarious and fast-changing world?
Renan Bernardo
I believe that writing and reading. It's these two things are the ones that keep me sane with all of what's happening. It's a way to keep myself in contact with my own thoughts and with the world. So it's kind of a cliché talking that in a podcast about writing, but I think writing and reading is what keeps me grounded and hopeful.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Sure. Do you read a lot of Portuguese science fiction or primarily English or both?
Renan Bernardo
Both. Yeah.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Okay, so this is a little bit off topic, but I'm curious now, if you are seeing different trends in the Portuguese science fiction market, especially with regard to climate fiction, is there a lot of solarpunk being published in Portuguese or is it primarily an English phenomenon? What's happening there?
Renan Bernardo
There are people that are venturing in Solarpunk here in Brazil, but I think that it's primarily an English phenomenon for now, because we don't have that much variety of places to publish as well. We had a recent anthology that was published here. It was an anthology published also in English and Italian by Francesco Verso and it came out here in Portuguese last year. I think that was our second solarpunk anthology published here. So we don't have that much of a tradition publishing climate fiction and solarpunk, which is kind of sad because the first solarpunk anthology was from here. It was published in English by World Weaver Press. And it was a Brazilian anthology, but kind of maybe for many years that was the only one.
Susan Kaye Quinn
I had forgotten about that, but yeah, now that you say that, I remember you've mentioned that before in one of our other encounters. That is kind of interesting how it started there. I think the struggle is everywhere, to be honest, with finding venues that are open to these kinds of stories, willing to publish them, willing to get them out there. And it's a little bit of the struggle.
Renan Bernardo
Yeah.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Part of why, again, why the pod is in existence is I'm trying to help build the audience in a sense for these stories by just reaching out to people and letting them know that it exists. And then maybe that will convince some of the larger publishers that, hey, look, there are actually people who want to read these stories. How about we publish more of them? So it's kind of a circular thing I'm trying to build with this.
Conscious Chair is, again, not explicitly climate fiction. However, people will discover you through that story being so visible and then hopefully go back and read your body of work and find all these other stories. So I see that as a win, regardless of whether that particular story is solarpunk. I don't know how you feel about that or if you're seeing any of that where people are like, Oh, I saw you on the Nebula list and now I'm going and reading your other works. Are you seeing that happen?
Renan Bernardo
Yeah, that happens. Not only with the Nebula, but with other publications. Maybe I have some story in solarpunk magazine and then people like it and then they go read some of my other stories and that happens a lot.
Susan Kaye Quinn
I believe it because your stories are amazing. And like I said, I'm a fan, so I can totally see how people, I mean, that's just how it works with fiction anyway, is you find an author who you really like, and then you go and read the rest of their stuff. So that's one way I hope having people like yourself on the pad, build up a collection, a list of authors that we've talked to, books that they recommend, books that they've written. And if you like one of these, you're probably going to like some of the others on the list. And oftentimes that sort of discovery is the hardest thing for readers and writers to find that next story that you really have a high probability that you're going to like this one too. Hopefully we will get some of that going as well.
Last question, you got the Nebula nom, you've got a rash of new stories in last year, you got this new short story collection coming out, you are just doing so many great things. What are you working on now and what is coming next?
Renan Bernardo
Actually, right now I'm not writing anything new, I'm revising a short story and kind of planning a new one because just talking about the collection that will come out soon takes a lot of time. And also I'm campaigning for SFWA members to vote on my novelette, A Short Biography of a Conscious Chair, and the final ballot of the Nebula. And just talking about these things takes a lot of time. You have to be all the time on social networks and talking with people. And so I'm not really writing anything right now. I have a story that came out recently at Diabolical Plots called The Offer of Peace Between Two Worlds. And also have a story at Apex Magazine. Those stories are not climate fiction, but they came out recently. And the one in Apex Magazine is called The Complete Log of Week 893819—Dana's Story. It's a dark science fiction story. And I have a story at Reactor Magazine. That one is kind of climate fiction. It's called The Plasticity of Being. It's about a company that exploited some people and developed an enzyme to make them digest plastic.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Oh wow.
Renan Bernardo
The company wanted to end hunger in the world. But they exploited these people to create that enzyme and then now these people are out there and they feed on plastic. So it's a very dark story also, and it touches on many elements of environmental and climate fiction.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Sounds amazing. I'm definitely going to be checking that one out as well. So one last last question, sort of a follow on. Lots and lots of short stories, which I love and also are really big in the solarpunk space as well. Not as many novels. And I think part of that is because people aren't publishing the novels and so less motivation to write them, but a lot of action going on in the short fiction space, which you're obviously doing. Have you been thinking about writing a novel? Have you written novels in this kind of climate fiction space? Or is that a maybe future thing? What are your thoughts?
Renan Bernardo
Not yet. I have some ideas that I have thought about, but I haven't developed them into longer stories yet. I've been quite focused on publishing short fiction for now. It's also a matter of time for me because I think short fiction works best in my day-to-day. I have a day job, so I think short fiction for now works fine, but I have plans to write something longer, including a climate fiction novel maybe.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Well, I would read the heck out of it. So put me down as one vote for a longer novel work from Renan Bernardo.
Renan Bernardo
Thank you.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Absolutely, and thank you for coming on the pod today. As usual, great conversation and I really hope that our listeners will do themselves the treat of downloading some of your fiction and checking it out. Thanks for coming.
Renan Bernardo
Thank you for having me here, Susan. And I can't wait to listen to the other guests on the Bright Green Futures. It's a honor to be here.
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LINKS Ep. 6: Exploring Grief in Climate Ficiton with Author Renan Bernardo
Virtual Author Panel on Hopepunk (Susan Kaye Quinn, T.K. Rex, Renan Bernardo, Brianna Castognozzi, Watertown Library, Jan 2023)
A Short Biography of a Conscious Chair by Renan Bernardo (Samovar Magazine, February 2023)
A Shoreline of Oil and Infinity by Renan Bernardo (Escape Pod #863)
When It's Time to Harvest by Renan Bernardo (Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors)
Look to the Sky, My Love by Renan Bernardo (Solarpunk Magazine #1, Nominated for a Utopia Award)
Different Kinds of Defiance by Renan Bernardo, Short Story Collection (Android Press) including The River that Passed Through My Life (originally published in Portuguese by Editora Dame Blanche)
Eight Steps to Steal a Yacht and Build a Hospital by Renan Bernardo (Solarpunk Magazine #8)
The Orchard of Tomorrow by Kelsea Yu (Clarkesworld)
Solarpunk: Short Stories from Many Futures, edited by Francesco Verso (releases 9.3.2024 in ebook and print)
Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World edited by Gerson Lodi-Ribeiro, Translated by Fabio Fernandes (World Weaver Press, English translation of the world’s first solarpunk anthology from Brazil and Portugal)
The Offer of Peace Between Two Worlds by Renan Bernardo (Diabolical Plots)
The Complete Log of Week 893819—Dana’s Story by Renan Bernardo (Apex Magazine)
The Plasticity of Being by Renan Bernardo (Reactor Magazine)
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Toward the end of May, I’ll be giving away a two copies of Little Blue Marble’s A World on Fire, a slim anthology that contains my very short prose-poem Rewilding Indiana alongside a bunch of great climate fiction.
I’ll pick from subscribers towards the end of May, so if you haven’t already subscribed, now’s the time!
Ep. 6: Exploring Grief in Climate Fiction with Author Renan Bernardo