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: Writing Climate Fiction
While seemingly every other news headline tells us about a devastating new climate reality, these realities also invite us to write fiction that can capture our changing environment, play out its consequences, and describe futures we can only, at this moment, imagine. In this eight-week short fiction workshop, we will write stories that address our planet’s climate emergency, and we will explore creative ways of giving literary shape to a subject so large that it often lends itself best to numbers and charts.
In eight weeks, you will bring one short story through two rounds of workshopping, with an eye towards publication. Along the way, we will read example texts from writers like Ursula K. Le Guin, Tomás Rivera, Thomas Ligotti and more to discuss the major challenges these climate writers engage with in their work. All writers in this class will be invited to publish their stories from this class 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 Essays and Op-Eds (multi-week, starting 10/26)
Our Planet, Our Stories: Apocalyptic and Dystopian Fiction (Sunday, October 29th, 12pm-4pm, FREE)
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. Please visit the Resources tab to access the video-conference link.
Zoom Participation:
Students are not required to turn their camera on, but are encouraged to participate any way they feel comfortable through functions such as the live chat, emoji reactions, and unmuting the microphone. Learn more about using Zoom here.
Zoom Accessibility:
We ask that instructors enable closed captioning and send a transcript of the session after class. You can also enable closed captioning at any time during the meeting. If your instructor forgets to send the transcript, just send ’em an email!