Class Description
GrubStreet’s Our Planet, Our Stories series focuses on the climate crisis, and aims to help writers find creative ways to engage with this urgent global issue. At the end of the series, all participants will be invited to submit writing to an anthology that GrubStreet will put out in the spring of 2024. This is the second installation of GrubStreet's annual Our Times, Our Stories series, which offers a variety of free and reduced-cost classes focused on a pressing contemporary issue, with a free print and digital anthology of student writing collected nd distributed at the end of the series. To donate to the series, please visit our donation page.
Our Planet, Our Stories: Apocalyptic and Dystopian Fiction
This four-hour seminar engages with the prevailing modes of early 21 st century thought and social anxieties in fiction: apocalypse, dystopia, and endings, as underwritten by an accelerating climate crisis. What is apocalyptic lit in a time of emerging apocalypse, and how do you write dystopian fiction if dystopia appears to be all around?
With climate and ecology as our twin anchors, we’ll think about the craft of writing about (and for?) the end of the world. The class will dive deep into questions of craft and ethics. How do you write the end? What is the difference between utopian fiction and dystopian fiction, and what, if any, moral imperatives are contained in postapocalyptic narratives? As we collectively watch the world we have known begin to end, we’ll take seriously Maggie Nelson’s suggestion: “One of the things we can do, for better or worse, is make art.”
All writers in this class will be invited to publish their work in an anthology put together by GrubStreet in the spring of 2024.
Other Classes in the Our Planet, Our Stories Series
Our Planet, Our Stories: Writing Climate Fiction (multi-week, starting 10/24)
Our Planet, Our Stories: Writing Climate Essays and Op-Eds (multi-week, starting 10/26)
Our Planet, Our Stories: Nature Writing (Sunday, November 12th, 12pm-4pm, FREE)
Our Planet, Our Stories: Ecopoetics (Sunday, December 3rd, 12pm-4pm, FREE)
Our Planet, Our Stories: Writing Climate Justice (Sunday, December 10th, 12pm-4pm, FREE)
Class Format
This class will take place using Zoom videoconferencing. About 15 minutes before your class is scheduled to begin, you'll receive an email from your instructor with a link to join the class meeting!
Thanks to the excellent literary citizenship of our donors, scholarships are available for all GrubStreet classes. To apply, click the gray "APPLY FOR SCHOLARSHIP" button. In order to be considered for a scholarship, you must complete your application at least one week before the start date of a class. Please await our scholarship committee's decision before registering for the class. We cannot hold spots in classes, so the sooner you apply, the better. Scholarships cannot be applied retroactively.
For more detailed information about GrubStreet scholarships, including how to contribute to scholarship funds for other students, click here.
This class will take place using Zoom videoconferencing. After registering, a yellow Resources tab will appear in this section containing a link to join class. Please note that you will need to be logged into view the Resources tab.
Zoom Participation:
In our experience, the intimate nature of a writing workshop benefits from on-camera participation. Students are of course welcome to turn their camera off whenever they need to, but it is a community norm for cameras to be on most of the time. You can learn more about using Zoom here.
Zoom Accessibility:
You can enable closed captioning at any time during the meeting by clicking the CC button at the bottom of the screen. If you'd like to access the transcript after class, please make sure to let your instructor ahead of time that you'd like a copy.