In appreciation of Amy Brady's hard work on boosting the fortunes of the cli-fi genre through her monthly cli-fi column and her podcasts and forum appearances

UPDATED FEBRUARY 2020:
I love Amy Brady. We met online a while back, in 2016, and on Twitter she had asked her followers: "What do you all think about this new genre of cli-fi? Is it a real genre that will have staying power, or is it just a temporary buzzword and trend?"

I didn't know who she was at the time, but when I saw her tweet, I answered her on Twitter and said that from my point of view, as the coiner of the term with a PR background: "It's for real and it's here for a long time to come. Not a passing trend. Not a mere buzzword."

And then a few weeks [or months] later, she announced on Twitter that she was starting a new monthly column in a major literary magazine and she was calling the column by the titled of BURNING WORDS. It has now appeared in the literary magazine every month since February 2017. and has been a terrific boost for the fortunes of the cli-fi genre. Just for letting more and more people know about the genre. So thank you, Amy Brady. You are one of the best literary critics working in the USA media today! Bravo!

https://chireviewofbooks.com/2017/02/08/the-man-who-coined-cli-fi-has-some-reading-suggestions-for-you/

You might also have noticed Amy’s appearances on podcasts and radio at the YCC website, too.  

Some background about all this:

Her monthly columns on cli-fi trends are reprinted in the  Yale Climate Connections website, and I was the one who helped arranged that. Maybe Amy doesn't know, but when her first monthly cli-fi column was published, I sent it, and the link to it, to a friend of mine Professor Michael Svoboda at GWU who writes cli-fi film criticism and essays and cli-fi book reviews for the YCC site. I've known Dr Svoboda for a long time. I said: "Look what Amy Brady is doing now in a  major lit magazine!" He sent the link to the YCC editors, among them Bud Ward I think, and suggested they pick her column up and to make a long story short, they signed her up too for the monthly cli-fi reprints. I was so happy for Amy, to see her getting lots of positive press for the monthly column and then the YCC reprints, too. Way to go, Amy.

https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2018/07/climate-change-is-already-reshaping-america/

Because of her relationship with the YCC site, Amy also appeared on a YCC Radio podcast in a 90 second audio segment to discuss the rise in climate fiction.  So her voice and her understanding of cli-fi is making waves on popular YCC podcasts online! She's been on BBC radio, too and has a book contract now as well.

She also appeared on ''America Adapts,'' a podcast dedicated to speaking with people fight climate change across industries, whether in the arts or sciences or engineering fields. I also arranged this gig for her, by writing Doug Parsons the host of the show who I was contact via Twitter chats about cli-fi earlier and I told  him, when he asked to interview me, that ''no no no'' it would be far more interesting to interview Amy Brady as a guest on his show, rather than me. [I prefer to stay in the background, and the telephone connection from Taiwan is not always very clear.] So sure, he invited Amy to be on one of his episodes where he host and Amy discussed the evolving definition of climate fiction and how it can possible inspire readers to think more seriously about climate change. 

After I heard her on the podcast, I sent a short email to Amy saying ''BRAVO'' and congratulations for a very good podcast with Doug, one hour long I think, maybe 90 minutes, it was good, and I told her then and there: "Amy, you are making your mark now with cli-fi as a columnist and a radio interviewee, and the future I can see you getting invites to college campus forums on cli-fi and doing guest forums in NYC and Los Angeles with invited guests of your own, and getting interviewed on radio and TV and in other media websites for your work helping people to better understand what the cli-fi movement is all about. I am so glad we met on Twitter way back when. Bravo."

And there you have it. Amy Brady rocks. And there's more to come. I can see a book about cli-fi in the future, authored or edited by Amy, and I can see her appearing at more and more college campuses as a cli-fi expert and literary critic. I see a long future ahead of her in the cli-fi movement, in her own unique and pioneering way. Like I told, her, I am so glad I met her on Twitter in those early days before she launched her monthly cli-fi trends column. (Hat tip to Amy's husband Alan Scherstuhl. I think I met her literary tweets via Alan.) 

Amy's a star. Her columns are must-reads. Long live Amy Brady!



Amy, native of Topeka, Kansas, has a PHD in Literature, received in 2013 from UMass-Amherst, with a Phd thesis titled "Staging the Depression:The Federal Theater Project's Drama of Poverty 1935-1939."

She also has a Masters degree in English from the University of Missouri - Kansas City. Her day job on the East Coast now is as a manager of the grants and development department at a major college in Manhattan. She and Alan got married in Topeka, Kansas in 2012.

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THIS TOO:
Great article from Merriam-Webster dictionary about the rise of #CliFi! - https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/cli-fi-clifi-climate-fiction-genre-words-were-watching #CliFi #scifi #genre [see Margaret Atwood ''shout out'' there, too!]