First, sorry for some radio silence on the pod!
After launching the Bright Green Futures anthology, doing a bunch of book events, and hopping in my EV to drive 9000 miles across the US and Canada… I needed a break. And yet, no breaks were to be had! As soon as I was back home, I did another book conference, had a ton of stuff to catch up on, and then managed to tweak my knee trying to battle the weeds in my native garden.
Not a terrible way to go, but still…
So, I’m taking a brief break from podcasting BUT… I will return with more thoughts on how to create hopeful climate fiction stories during the fall of the American empire and how we fight to find a way forward.
![Susan Kaye Quinn is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱 ‪@susankayequinn.bsky.social‬ Someone asked how to do the "good things" so a 🧵 "Start small" is good but I think more in terms of "start local" — like right where you are, people are already doing things, just look then help One framing I really like is the 3 Ts: Triage, Transition, Transformation 1/n August 20, 2025 at 10:18 AM](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!mGN-!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F399becf0-eae0-4341-897e-bd41b53b865f_598x310.png "Susan Kaye Quinn is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱 ‪@susankayequinn.bsky.social‬ Someone asked how to do the "good things" so a 🧵 "Start small" is good but I think more in terms of "start local" — like right where you are, people are already doing things, just look then help One framing I really like is the 3 Ts: Triage, Transition, Transformation 1/n August 20, 2025 at 10:18 AM")
In the meantime…
NEW BOOKS from the talented guest authors on the pod!
Each of these authors have been on the pod at least once, but since that time, they’ve released new short stories, novels, collections, games… not all are solarpunk but, if you’re like me, you quickly become fans of individual authors. The best way to know you’ll like a story is to have read something by that author before!
So here we go… (note: all book purchase links go to Bookshop.org because they support indie bookstores)
Tashan Mehta
When Tashan was on the pod (Ep. 16: The Shapes of Stories), we briefly discussed her upcoming release of this gorgeous book… and now The Mad Sisters of Esi is here!
Susanna Clarke's Piranesi meets Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler in this stunning meta fantasy about the power of stories, belief, and sisterhood
Myung and her sister Laleh are the sole inhabitants of the whale of babel—until Myung flees, beginning an adventure that will spin her through dreams, memories, and myths.
Sarena Ulibarri
Sarena has not only been on the pod discussing her prior work (Ep. 14: Imagining Another Life), she’s also an author in the Bright Green Futures anthology (published Earth Day 2025), and popped by again to talk about her story (Ep. 29: Climate Restoration). Since then she’s done many cool things including writing for a new innovative hopeful climate fiction zine (Tractor Beam), with her story, What Really Happened in Nightshade.
Renan Bernardo
Renan was an early guest (thanks for that leap of faith, Renan!) on the pod (Ep. 6: Exploring Grief in Climate Fiction), also a BGF anthology author (Ep. 28: Climate Anxiety), and an amazingly prolific author! Seriously check out all his stuff. But an exciting recent addition to his bibliography is Disgraced Return of the Kap's Needle.
A dark SF novella set in a doomed spaceship coming back to Earth, about the claustrophobia of space and the horrific consequences of profit-driven space exploration.
You can also get the book from the publisher, Dark Matter Magazine.
BrightFlame
BrightFlame has been busy promoting her novel, The Working, (Ep. 19: Witchy Solarpunk), and was also in the BGF anthology (Ep. 33: Climate Resilience), so she doesn’t have any new releases apart from those, but she recently taught solarpunk narratives at the Climate Imaginarium, "How to Solarpunk for Hope and Resilence."
If you’d like to get a heads up when she’ll be doing more teaching or have other events, you can subscribe to her newsletter (and check out her upcoming events page).
Jamie Liu
Jamie’s story about bees and connection remains one of my all-time fav solarpunk short stories! (Ep. 8: Loneliness, Connection, and Resilience) But her creative talents are pretty expansive and lately she and a few other folks joined the Day Zero Solarpunk Jam to create a solarpunk videogame (made with Unity)!
“bloom” is a solarpunk visual novel with CRPG elements. You play a youth in the town of Asters investigating the source of a mysterious contaminant in the town’s central river. Along the way, you discover more about the town’s history of shutting down an extractive refinery and the true nature of this new substance.
(This is where I note there has been an real and sustained uptick of solarpunk activity—stories, games, interest in general—in the last nine months. The chaos of fascism in America is sending people searching for a better way and I really can’t stress enough how imporant it is for people to keep doing the imaginative work to build a better world. It might seem like the darkest of days right now, and it is, but this is when you build the foundation, or even just the bricks, for the world to come.)
![Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱 @susankayequinn@wandering.shop and the climate crisis A screenshot from @tomscocca.bsky.social "The good news is that antifascism, Reconstruction 2.0, the abolition of billionaires and the Butlerian Jihad are all one project now" Sep 01, 2025, 01:03 PM](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!z5oP!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F53c327fd-568a-4e0b-a149-96c849c93002_600x383.png "Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱 @susankayequinn@wandering.shop and the climate crisis A screenshot from @tomscocca.bsky.social "The good news is that antifascism, Reconstruction 2.0, the abolition of billionaires and the Butlerian Jihad are all one project now" Sep 01, 2025, 01:03 PM")
T. K. Rex
T. K. Rex was my very first guest on the pod (Ep. 2: Chatting with Dolphins) and I had the utter delight of seeing her in person while I was traveling across the country in #SueWalkstheEarth (Sarena too!). She has two stories in the BGF anthology (Ep. 31: Climate Roles) and is prolific as heck. Her latest short story, Banded Iron, is in The Sunday Morning Transport, and here’s a taste:
The iron below you was born in the center of a star your people named Coatlicue, long after she was gone. You might say the iron killed her, or she died to make the iron. Or you might describe the subatomic particles and how they fused, because you are a scientist, and you know how metaphors can lie.
Coatlicue was the mother of our sun, and of yours, too, and of all the worlds woven from the dust between.
You see, in a way, we are twins.
Sunday Morning Transport is a subscriber-driven story newsletter, with free subscribers getting one story a month. Looks intriguing!
T. K. also has a collection of Wildcraft Drones stories (YES!) coming in Fall 2026 from Stelliform Press. Subscribe to her newsletter to be notified when preorders go live!
Ana Sun
Ana was an early guest as well (Ep. 10: Adaptation in Climate Fiction), in the BGF anthology with a heartwarming story (Ep. 34: Climate Heritage), and she’s got a new collection of solarpunk short stories coming out in just a few days from NewCon Press (releases Sept 16th)!
A selection of deftly told near-future fictions that explore how we might adapt to climate change and other challenges, showcasing the author's ability to craft tales of hope from even the darkest of circumstance.
You can also get Futures to Live By from the publisher but if you’re in the US, be aware that it’s a UK publisher and who knows what’s happening with shipping at the moment.
Ana and Sue
Ana and I also have a non-fiction article about solarpunk that just came out in Ecological Citizen that we are quite proud of.
This paper discusses the mindset shift that the genre of solarpunk embraces: that nature is talking and, if we want to live sustainably on the planet, we need to learn to listen. Solarpunk stories help us see our relation to nature di fferently – as porous beings, hosts and beneficiaries of entire microscopic communities, intimately intertwined with our environment. Solarpunk stories can help us to decentre ourselves, shift our perspectives and reimagine what it means to relinquish control and reconnect with nature.
Keywords: ecological empathy; societal change; sustainability; values
Citation: Sun A and Quinn SK (2025) How solarpunk can help us rewild our lives. The Ecological Citizen 8(2): 186–92.
You can check out the full issue (Ecological Citizen Vol. 8 No. 2 2025) or go straight to the PDF (How Solarpunk Can Help Us Rewild Our Lives)—you’ll have to scroll down but the page numbers are hyperlinked.
Whew. Okay, that’s a lot, but I want to make you aware of two more things!
1 - I’ve decided to teach solarpunk writing classes
This is still being pulled together but you can sign up below to be notified when signups are available.
![I'm still setting up details about when to run a solarpunk writing class, but it will be online and free. Subscribe below to be notified with the class signup information when I get it together (signing up for the class will be separate). Subscribe to be notified about Sue's Solarpunk Writing Classes MEME: crops on fire, figure throwing bucket of water on them "World on fire" "me writing my little hopepunk stories"](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!yrTF!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5b233ba6-dcf1-4e5e-902e-5b41619f43f4_1188x993.png "I'm still setting up details about when to run a solarpunk writing class, but it will be online and free. Subscribe below to be notified with the class signup information when I get it together (signing up for the class will be separate). Subscribe to be notified about Sue's Solarpunk Writing Classes MEME: crops on fire, figure throwing bucket of water on them "World on fire" "me writing my little hopepunk stories"")
2 - This heckin’ cool call for submissions from The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
I’m currently writing a story for this (a story I’m in love with, as it should be).
The reasons I’m excited:
“The stories can be dystopian or utopian; pre-, post-, or non-apocalyptic. They can be optimistic as Sesame Street or dark as Edgar Allan Poe’s basement.”
“The stories do, however, need to have some conceivable connection to the Bulletin’s interest in (avoiding) the Apocalypse.”
“will be judged by acclaimed American science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson.”
Do you know how rare it is for a call to openly request hopeful climate fiction?? That avoids the apocalypse??? That’s judged by Stan????
Ok, calm down and write, Sue.
I encourage everyone to write a hopeful climate fiction story for this!
Not that we’ll all win the contest… but someone will. Solarpunk is a group project, remember? I want those slush readers and Stan himself to have plenty of hopeful climate fiction stories to choose from! And once those stories are written… you can submit them elsewhere as well.
That’s all for now! Sorry for the epic post, and I promise to get back to recording the podcast soon!
Peace and Joy,
Sue
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