The Writer's Studio: Cli-Fi: Inventing a form to meet the Climate Catastrophe

On November 14, please join us for Cli-Fi: Inventing a form to meet the Climate Catastrophe, a Writer's Studio workshop hosted by Georgina Beaty.

Ben Okri issued a call in the Guardian for writers to “confront the climate crisis” with “existential creativity.” He writes “If you knew you were at the last days of the human story what would you write? How would you write?” What does this mean, tangibly: to create a new form and philosophy to grapple with climate change in writing? What about elements of craft? What of humor and subject matter? Are there to be no more stories of first dates? Do we look at the crises head on or at a slant? In this workshop, we’ll look at examples of contemporary climate fiction and distinct approaches to addressing the climate emergency through story. We’ll also work through exercises to tease out and begin to shape our own "new form" to meet these unprecedented times.

Georgina Beaty is the author of the short story collection The Party is Here (Freehand Books, 2021). Her fiction has appeared in New England Review, The Walrus, The New Quarterly, The Fiddlehead, PRISM and elsewhere. As an actor and playwright, she’s worked with theatres across Canada and internationally. A 2020-2022 Stegner Fellow in fiction, she holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia, has been supported by fiction residencies at MacDowell and The Banff Centre, and was a screenwriting resident at the Canadian Film Centre. She's currently a Jones Lecturer in Creative Writing at Stanford University.