creative writing on environmental justice
The smell of burning wood is pouring in the open window over my bed, filling my nostrils before I even have the chance to open my eyes. The last time I smelled smoke this strong was two summers ago when the corner of my trailer was on fire. I don’t jump out of bed, though. These fires are an emergency of a different kind. The winds have been blowing from the northeast for . . .
In Egypt, at the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27), a South Pacific leader asks the world to bear witness to the death of his homeland. He is speaking from a screen. In a full suit, flanked by the flags of his country and the UN, he stands behind a lectern on the shore of a nondescript island. His voice carries over the sounds of water on sand, wind . . .
these threads capture the shadows
and force them to account for the silence
these threads bind your sight to the sob
—Alejandra Pizarnik
Climate Change is an angry beast and we are poking it with sticks
—Wallace Broecker
A lot is changing. A whole lot, and just like Nma, my mother, would say, I can feel it in my body. I can also feel these changes. Nonetheless, I think the changes have gone beyond feelings. I see and hear them everywhere and every passing day. At night, usually before dawn, the wind sings . . .
“Finding meaning in grief does not mean we’re over the loss or okay with the loss; it means we can find a way to honor the love, even in our pain.”
—David Kessler
It is my good fortune to have seen elephants from childhood. Many would imagine I had grown up near a sanctuary, but that wasn’t the case. We lived by an iron-ore mine, and forests surrounded every colony we lived in. The townships we lived in were made by cutting through forests and hills. The roads consisted of ups and downs. Walking with our heavy school bags always . . .
How can—or can’t—ideological political movements serve us in the climate crisis?
It’s a question which increasingly nags while reading Kohei Saito’s “degrowth communism” bestseller, originally published in Japanese as Capital in the Anthropocene (2020). In this new English translation, University . . .
Reckoning 9 comes to you from a year of reading and discussion—from intervals of not quite thinking we knew what this unthemed issue should look like to flurries of activity, enthusiasm and advocacy. Then, in a slow pull-back at the end of the submission window, everyone on the editorial team started to say okay, yes. Together with the writers, thanks to them . . .
How does Twitter’s collapse relate to the climate crisis?
I’m far from alone in retreating from global social media to more private spaces—shared interests, affinities, locality. The most pertinent one here is my forest stewardship community. Even the solitary act of cutting up an invasive tree—mitigating centuries of damage caused by settlers to a formerly . . .
When we decided to leave Reckoning 9 without a theme, I wasn’t certain what to expect. Speculative fiction brings to environmental justice writing endless possibilities. Within speculative fiction, we explore difficult topics like climate change, pollution, and human displacement from the comfortable frames of comic sci-fi, cozy fantasy, and solarpunk. . . .