Essays, articles and short fiction by Liz

WHEN WRITERS REBEL (WR) formed to become Extinction Rebellion’s (XR’s) literary wing in the summer of 2019, our aim was to put literature in the service of the threatened ecosystems that sustain us. One of our inspirations was the Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh’s 2016 book, The Great Derangement, which criticised literary fiction’s failure to address climate […]

Liz didn’t write this cogent article on cli-fi in the movie world but she wishes she had. It’s by her niece Sally Jensen, and was first published in Film Stories Magazine.
Opening scenes. A freak polar vortex blankets the US Midwest with snow, ice and bitter cold, bringing society to a standstill. After consecutive floods, droughts and cyclones, a city of 9 million people runs out of water. Record-shattering heat hits rich European countries, killing the most vulnerable and parching once-verdant hillscapes.

I know a glaciologist who spends much of her time deep in ice. Like many of her colleagues, Birgitte has found and measured pieces of the climate jigsaw for herself. She can see how and where they fit in the future picture of our shared home, to the point where she sometimes wishes she knew less.