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 Justice
In this four-hour seminar, we will do a deep dive into writing nonfiction about our changing environment through a climate justice lens, and we will practice incorporating compelling calls to action into our nonfiction. Climate justice focuses on the ways that different groups of people are inordinately affected by environmental disasters, policy decisions, and public messaging about the environment.
Together we will discuss what we hope to achieve through our writing, how our experiences fit into a larger landscape of climate injustice and activism, and how we each might use our particular voice to contribute to this global conversation in a meaningful way. We will read and discuss examples from authors like Mary Annaïse Heglar, Harriet Riley, Rebecca Solnit, and Julian Brave NoiseCat to study the ways they've addressed these topics in their work. You will also have a chance to respond to writing prompts to help get new stories started, and a chance to share your writing for on-the-spot feedback in small groups. 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: 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)
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. 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!
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!