UPDATED
FROM TELEREAD website, an updated version:
http://www.teleread.com/
It's a first for American libraries, and it's a first for the emerging literary genre of ''climate fiction'' (CF).
All a
cross America, there are weekly and monthly book clubs that focus on
SF,
romance fiction,
or
YA novels. This week, the first-ever
''Climate-Fiction
B
Club
i
''
s being inaugurated
in St. Croix Minnesota, with regional arts organizer
Heather
Rutledge setting the club up in cooperation with local libraries and through a grant from the
National Endowment for the Arts.
"We have heard that truth is stranger than fiction," Rutledge told TeleRead in a recent email. "That may be the case, but until you have cracked open a
climate fiction novel
or two, you may not have fully imagined the ways that life is altered by climate change."As part of the 2016 Big Read in the St. Croix Valley in Minnesota, these library clubs have already planned events using a few engaging and provocative book selections to discuss the power of literature to wrestle with the vexing environmental questions of our time, according to Rutledge.
The cli
mate fiction
book club discussions will take place
at three libraries in
Prescott, Stillwater and St. Croix Falls, she said.
She is also thinking of experiment ing with a Google hangouts video cast for future CF book club meetings in March and April, which awould allow anyone to check in and follow the discussions -- including people in other states, Canada and overseas in Asia and Europe.
Although this reporter has been following the rise of the
''The programming is all stemming from ArtReach St. Croix's multi-disciplinary and valley-wide partnerships," she said.
The first event will feature an anthology of climate-themed short stories, with a forward by Bill McKibben, titled ''I'm With the Bears: Short Stories from a Damaged Planet."
CF
genre over the past few years, I had no idea that these specialized book clubs were coming. In fact, I had never met Ms. Rutledge before last week. This idea her idea, and she carried it out with her team in Minnesota.''The programming is all stemming from ArtReach St. Croix's multi-disciplinary and valley-wide partnerships," she said.
The first event will feature an anthology of climate-themed short stories, with a forward by Bill McKibben, titled ''I'm With the Bears: Short Stories from a Damaged Planet."
Participants may attend the meetings with print books in hand or carrying the ebook version on their Kindles, Rutledge said.
The UK-publ
ished
anthology
contains contributions by Margaret Atwood, Paolo Bacigalupi,
and
Kim Stanley Robinson,
among others,
Rutledge said, adding: "It's a great way to get a survey of some of the best 'climate fiction' writers of our time."The second novel the Minnesota
CF
book clubs will tackle in their monthly group discussions in March is "Flight Behavior" by Barbara Kingsolver.
Available for readers in both paperback and ebook versions, club members may attend the meeting in March with either version in hand, and all future club meetings will be conducted using books in both print and ebook editions, according to Rutledge.
''In 'Flight Behavior,' Kingsolver traces the unforeseen impact of global climate change on the ordinary citizens of one rural community," Rutledge said.
When I asked how the book club idea took shape, Rutledge told me that she first heard about the
''climate fiction''
genre term from Irene Faass, a friend who teaches eco-feminist and other literature at Minneapolis Community Technical College.
"Irene introduced me to the term and then I was able to write the idea into a grant for The Big Read, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts here in Minnesota," Rutledge said.
"It's really talking about the works of fiction that start with the assumption that the climate has changed," she said “And sometimes that means it's post-apocalyptic, but not always. The climate and the environment might not even be a central part of the story, but the characters and their relationships to each other and the choices that they make in the book are rooted in the fact that something has shifted."
Rutlege has organized the first few meetings of the
CF
book clubs
, with more events planned throughout the year.
The third CF book club meeting in April will use John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath," she said, also available as in ebook.
"Club members will be able to select their own book for a fourth meeting, and clubs may continue to meet and select
climate ficiton
titles to read for as long as they like," she said.
Rutledge added that she has heard a few misconceptions about what readers can expect to find in the
CF
genre.
"Some people think it's post-apocalyptic, they think it's speculative, they think that it's going to be first and foremost a book about science, but that’s not always the case," Rutledge said. "And in fact, that's why we picked the first book for the series -- 'I’m With The Bears' since in the stories by many well-known authors we see they are already dipping their toes in
to
the climate fiction genre."
In addition, the series of books has been carefully tailored to appeal to inhabitants of the St. Croix Valley, she said.
"The second book that we chose, 'Flight Behavior,' we chose very specifically because people around here are talking a lot about pollinators and about migration corridors for birds and butterflies and pollinators that are threatened. So 'Flight Behavior' is kind of a cool tie-in to that pollinator partnership."
Environmental themes have permeated thousands of books. Rutledge said that the
CF
genre term only gives another dimension to the existence of these themes throughout works of historical and contemporary literature.
"Obviously people have been writing books that count as
climate fiction
for decades, but this is really a newly recognized genre, and there are very few people I’ve ever talked to who have heard the word before," she said.
"It's a fun new way to distinguish books."
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