Overview
- Approachable guide to creative writing on the environment
- Each chapter includes an overview of writing styles and approaches, further reading and writing activities
- Explores timely themes in environmental writing: climate change, activism, nature writing and the non-human
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About this book
This creative writing textbook introduces students to ecofiction: narrative writing that focuses on the environment. Also known as ‘climate fiction’ or ‘cli-fi’, an increasing number of short story writers, novelists and pioneers of emerging forms such as interactive fiction are taking up the call to develop their own creative responses to the climate crisis. This guide explores a cross-section of genres and ways of writing about our world, as well as the ethical and technical challenges involved. It offers a discussion of classic and contemporary texts, literary criticism and creative writing exercises. The book covers a broad range of themes and styles of writing, from works that engage with nature and landscape writing to those that take a more activist approach to climate change. With an awareness of the Global South and the subaltern, the framing of the Anthropocene, wilderness and nature writing is challenged. Each chapter offers a new perspective on ecofiction for the creative writer, with reading suggestions and connections to other writers and texts, and writing activities. Designed for upper-level undergraduate and postgraduate writing modules on the environment, the book is also suitable for independent writers looking to expand their skillset.
Featuring 20 interviews with ecofiction authors: Ana Filomena Amaral, Austin Aslan, Denise Baden, David Barker, TC Boyle, Lynn Buckle, Adam Connor, Michelle Cook, Julie Carrick Dalton, April Doyle, Anna Holmes, Somto Ihezue, RB Kelly, Gill Lewis, Anne Mordell, Anthony Nanson, Midge Raymond, Manda Scott, Mary Woodbury, John Yunker.
‘An extensive and enthusiastic guide into the wild and varied worlds of eco-fiction.’
--James Canton, Director of Wild Writing MA, University of Essex, UK
Keywords
- Literature and the Environment
- Literature and Animal Studies
- Cli-Fi
- Climate fiction
- Creative approaches
- Ethics
- Climate crisis
- Wilderness
- Nonhuman
- Nature writing
- Writing activities
- Global South
- Activism
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Kevan Manwaring is the MA Creative Writing Course Leader at Arts University Bournemouth, UK. He is the author of Desiring Dragons: creativity, imagination, and the writer’s quest, contributor to Storytelling for Nature Connection, and Coastal Environments in Popular Song, and editor of Heavy Weather: tempestuous tales of stranger climes. He has contributed articles to Writing in Practice, New Writing, TEXT, Axon, English Review, Revenant and Gothic Nature. He was an academic consultant for BBC 4’s The Secret Life of Books, and is a panellist on BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking. He is also a member of the Climate Fiction Writers League.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Writing Ecofiction
Book Subtitle: Navigating the Challenges of Environmental Narrative
Authors: Kevan Manwaring
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-55090-4Due: 22 August 2024
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-55091-1Due: 22 August 2024
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIII, 251
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations