I always say that every day is Earth Day, that we need to take action every day of the year to take care of our planet. And, like Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate said, “No action or voice is too small to make a difference.” As artists, as writers, we can make a difference, not just in the art and magic we create but in everything else we do and don’t do. I’m curious to hear about what you all will be doing every day but also on Earth Day. Feel free to email me! My husband and I will be building a bat box out in our meadow to try to attract bats whose population has been reduced by 95% in Nova Scotia.
Sometimes it feels like we’re alone and powerless to fight climate change and do other actions that are good for our environment, but we aren’t alone. I think it’s great to hook into communities that you can share your ideas and actions with; sometimes they are doing most of the legwork. It seems that the general public and governments are still not thinking critically about climate change and biodiversity loss around the world. However, huge movements are fighting for our planet. Check Extinction Rebellion’s latest newsletter for examples. A survey I did a few years ago showed that even reading environmental novels increased readers’ resolve to do something good for our natural world. Check below for the types of actions that 103 participants recorded. This made me feel hopeful and inspired. These are things we can all do throughout the year. Remember, no action or voice is too small to make a difference, and the following are just a few ideas of things you can start doing if you haven’t already. Eco-fiction can lead to climate action.
April Book Recommendation
Between 2009 and just this year, I ran a micro-publishing company called Moon Willow Press. One author I published was Ron Melchiore, who has been living with his wife Johanna off-grid for decades. When I published his book Off Grid and Free: My Path to the Wilderness, he and Johanna were residing near a lake in the middle of nowhere in Saskatchewan, though reading this memoir, you realize it was definitely somewhere important!
Ron’s movement to off-grid living happened after he obtained an engineering degree when younger, but then he decided that he didn’t want to live the status-quo life. He wondered what a self-sufficient future would be like instead. Before building his first off-grid house in Maine, he thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail and bicycled from coast to coast in the US. Recently, they have built a new off-grid home in Nova Scotia, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, and though Moon Willow Press is closing this year, he is working to make his off-grid book accessible. Ron had nothing but great reviews on this book, and I learned quite a bit from it. When I first read the draft about seven years ago, I dreamed of someday having solar panels and our own big garden. Mission accomplished. Writers create, but they also can act upon ambitions and affinity toward the Earth, whether it’s trying to stop dependence on fossil fuels and meat or even just consuming less overall (food, products, etc.).
We finally met Ron and Johanna last summer on a trip to Cape Breton with my mother-in-law, and they are every bit as personable, witty, caring, knowledgeable, and down-to-earth as in the book. Also, I’m just going to give him a couple plugs here. As a sprint runner, he’s heading with Team Canada to the World Championships this year. He’s also helping to support a fantastic organization with his book sales: Let There Be Light International, which has helped almost a million people in off-grid Africa gain access to solar energy in their homes and health clinics.
World Eco-Fiction Spotlight
In April, I had the wonderful opportunity to chat with Oghenchovwe Donald Ekpeki, editor of The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction and so much more. He’s an African speculative fiction writer and editor in Nigeria. His Ife-Iyoku novella was a finalist in the Nebula, BSFA, Sturgeon awards, and won the Nommo and Otherwise awards. The Dominion anthology he co-edited won the British Fantasy award and was a finalist in the Locus and This Is Horror awards. He edited the first ever Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction anthology, which is free to download, and the Bridging Worlds non-fiction anthology, also free.
Shortly after our interview took place, he informed Twitter readers that his novelette O2 Arena has been nominated for a 2022 Hugo Award for Best Novelette. The author stated that makes him the first African to be nominated for best novelette, the first African-born Black writer nominated for the Hugo at all, and the first Black person nominated in the Best editor short form category, with the Year’s Best. The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction (2021) is a reprint anthology containing speculative fiction stories by some of the most exciting voices, old and new, from Africa and the diaspora. It features twenty-nine stories by twenty-five writers. Our interview explored ecological aspects found in the anthology and in other works by Ekpeki. He also co-edited a book mentioned in the “New and Upcoming Books” section below, Africa Risen.
New and Upcoming Books
There are so many exciting books I want to mention if you enjoy reading the great variety of ecologically oriented subjects out there: Mad Honey, out by Katie Welch in May (look forward to an interview with her in July), The House of Drought by Dennis Mombauer, A House Between Earth and The Moon by Rebecca Scherm, Scattered All Over the Earth by Yoko Tawada, Hovering by Rhett Davis, Pure Colour by Sheila Heti, Africa Risen—edited by Sheree Renée Thomas, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, and Zelda Knight—and Real Sugar is Hard to Find by Sim Kern, which is Android Press’s first publication. They are also the founders of Solarpunk Magazine.
Finally, one of my favorite nature writers is Amy Brady, who has been teasing about her upcoming book Ice: An American Obsession (Putnam, 2023). I don’t have many details about it, but she’s been tweeting ice facts now and then and I’m dying to dig into the book. Another book she edited with Tajja Isen, The World as We Knew it: Dispatches from a Changing Climate, comes out on June 14 and features nineteen fiction authors who “offer timely, haunting first-person reflections on how climate change has altered their lives.”
Flights of Foundry
The Rewilding Our Stories Discord keeps growing, y’all! On April 10, we had a great time participating in Flights of Foundry. Our meetup was in the Toast room and was titled “Ecology and climate change in speculative fictions.” This session was not recorded, but we hope to do something like it again in the future. Thanks to the kind joiners of this meetup, who asked great questions and were thoroughly engaged, our hour went by quickly. Thanks so much also to Sara Davis for moderating our panel and to fellow representative volunteers for participating: Hannah Barton, Lovis Geier, Mehitabel Glenhaber, and Yanasivan Kisten. Rewilding Our Stories is a group of readers who are interested in climate and ecological themes in contemporary and speculative arts and literature. We invite you to nerd out with us about the exciting field of rewilded fiction, which is growing in popularity.
Speaking of the Discord, we are a group of artists and scientists, and action-takers. Check out Rewilding Our Stories’ moderator Sara Davis’s climate news link roundup. She gathered some coverage from the third IPCC report release.
New Happenings at Dragonfly
I feel like this newsletter is getting lengthy, but I must mention some other updates this month! First, I reviewed Joel Burcat’s Strange Fire. If you like environmental thrillers and are curious about the effects of fracking, this novel is for you. In Turning the Tide, which highlights environmental reads and resources for children, teens, and young adults, Kimberly Christenson reviews A Wolf Called Wander by Roseanne Parry. Also, there’s a link to Ben Okri’s new environmentally conscious children's book Every Leaf a Hallelujah. I have a new Backyard Wildlife post up, which is a nod to my novel Back to the Garden as well as our experience moving here at the start of a pandemic and around the time a mass murder happened in Nova Scotia. If a backyard space and garden would ever come in handy, it was then…but it continues to be a place of solitude and inspiration. I’ve also updated the Eco-Games list, thanks to the discussion we had with the audience at Flights of Foundry.
Resources
In case you’ve missed these exciting resources at Dragonfly, which are constantly being updated, check ‘em out!
World’s biggest playlist? Our environmental/nature song-of-the-week playlist goes back to 2015.
Inspiring and informative author quotes from Dragonfly’s interviews
List of ecologically focused games
List of eco/climate films and documentaries
Eco-fiction links and resources
Book database: Database of over 900 book posts at Dragonfly.eco
Turning the Tide: The Youngest Generation: Fiction aimed toward children, teens, and young adults
Indie Corner: We give an occasional hats off to authors who publish independently
Backyard Wildlife: A hidden gem exploring how we are rewilding our own backyard and meadow
Artists & Climate Change. This is an extraordinary resource delving into all kinds of the arts focused on climate change. For a while now they’ve been rerunning my world eco-fiction spotlights. I’m a core writer for their team, and I’m both honored and grateful. Look for my “Wild Authors” series there.
Copyright 2024 Mary Woodbury