Ashley Shelby
Presenter:
“Climate Fiction: Writing Our Impacted World”
Ashley Shelby is a novelist and former environmental journalist. Her debut novel, South Pole Station, was a New York Times' Editor's Choice, an Indie Next Pick, and a Shelf Awareness Best Book of 2017, as well as one of Earther/Gizmodo's Best Environmental Fiction Books and a SyFy "Climate Fiction Book That Could Save the Earth." It also won the 2017 Lascaux Prize in Fiction. Her 2019 sci-fi/cli-fi novelette, Muri, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, a Hugo, and the Shirley Jackson Award. She is also the author of a nonfiction book, Red River Rising: The Anatomy of a Flood and the Survival of an American City. She lives in an old farmhouse with her family, surrounded by trees and winged friends.
In her presentation about climate fiction, she will discuss the nature of this "new" environmental fiction, including the ongoing evolution of the body of literature that has come to be termed "cli-fi." Ashley will explore different approaches to documenting our changing world, from realistic and speculative to hard sci-fi and fantasy; and why she prefers the term "First Impact Fiction."
Discussion will also include the way that fiction relating to climate change can allow readers to experience both the danger (Paolo Bagicaluppi's The Water Knife, for example) and the hope (Kim Stanley Robinson's New York 2140) embedded in climate impact and why both kinds of framing are important. Finally, she'll share some of the challenges she experiences when writing this kind of fiction in her own cli-fi writing practice, including risk-taking and her decision to occasionally work in different genres, such as sci-fi and fantasy.
About her presentation, Ashley said “I’m looking forward to a lively discussion with participants who are interested in trying cli-fi or who are already at work on this kind of writing.”