Bright Green Futures Podcast (Susan Kaye Quinn)

Hello Friends! Bright Green Futures lifts up stories about a more sustainable and just world and to talk about the struggle to get there. In the first episode, I talk about why we even need a podcast/newsletter like this. Why new stories are key to building a better world.

LINKS Ep. 1: Stories to Build a Better World

* Seven Sisters by Susan Kaye Quinn (also in German)

* Holdout in the Northern California Designated Wildcraft Zone by T.K. Rex

* Metamorphosis collection (preorder from Milkweed Editions)

SUBSCRIBE TO WIN STICKERS

In celebration of the launch of Bright Green Futures, I’m giving away FIVE of "Move Purposefully and Fix Things" stickers. Subscribe to be entered to win!

Bright Green Futures is a weekly newsletter/podcast. Check out the Featured Stories and Hopeful Climate Fiction lists for further reading. The best way to support the show is to subscribe and share the stories with your friends: BrightGreenFutures.wtf

Hello Friends! In this episode, I chat with author T.K. Rex about her solarpunk stories, including one where we’re talking to dolphins! We discuss how communicating with the non-human can open up our perspective about the changing climate and how the interface between ourselves and nature (and technology) needs to change. 

LINKS Ep. 2: Chatting with Dolphins (and author T.K. Rex)

* A Lot Full of Weeds by T.K. Rex

* Squawker and Dolphin Swimming Together by T.K. Rex

(transcript available on substack) 

Bright Green Futures is a weekly newsletter/podcast and lifts up stories about a more sustainable and just world and to talk about the struggle to get there. Check out the Featured Stories and Hopeful Climate Fiction lists for further reading. The best way to support the show is to subscribe and share the stories with your friends: BrightGreenFutures.wtf

Hello Friends! Today we’re going to talk about the connection between climate fiction and climate action in the real world.

LINKS Ep. 3: Climate Fiction to Climate Action

The two stories I discuss in this pod are part of a collection called Halfway to Better, which is available for preorder and releases on Earth Day, April 22nd. The individual stories are free to read—I hope you’ll download them and give them a try.

* Halfway to Better (releases April 22nd) by Susan Kaye Quinn

* Slimy Things Did Crawl by Susan Kaye Quinn

* Tower Girls by Susan Kaye Quinn

https://susankayequinn.com/series/halfway-to-better

Bright Green Futures is a weekly newsletter/podcast and lifts up stories about a more sustainable and just world and to talk about the struggle to get there. Check out the Featured Stories and Hopeful Climate Fiction lists for further reading. The best way to support the show is to subscribe and share the stories with your friends: BrightGreenFutures.wtf

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/featured-stories

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/hopeful-climate-fiction

Hello Friends! In this episode, I chat with Danielle Arostegui about her policy work for the Environmental Defense Fund, working at a Congressional thinktank to help pass the Inflation Reduction Act, and then deciding that writing climate fiction was where she wanted to take the fight next.

LINKS Ep. 4: From Scientist to Author, In Conversation with Danielle Arostegui

Solarpunk Drabble by Danielle Arostegui

Grist’s Climate Fiction Drabbles (100 word stories)

(transcript available on substack)https://grist.org/looking-forward/climate-fiction-drabbles-our-future-in-100-words/https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-arostegui/

Bright Green Futures is a weekly newsletter/podcast and lifts up stories about a more sustainable and just world and to talk about the struggle to get there. Check out the Featured Stories and Hopeful Climate Fiction lists for further reading. The best way to support the show is to subscribe and share the stories with your friends: BrightGreenFutures.wtf

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/featured-stories

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/hopeful-climate-fiction

Hello Friends! Today we’re going to talk about the connection between the structure of stories and how we think about the climate.

LINKS Ep. 5: Structure in Climate Storytelling

* The Great Derangement by Amitav Ghosh

* Ministry for the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson

* Heroine’s Journey by Gail Carriger

* Nothing is Promised series by Susan Kaye Quinn

* Halfway to Better by Susan Kaye Quinn

* Eddie Spaghetti Art

Bright Green Futures is a weekly newsletter/podcast and lifts up stories about a more sustainable and just world and to talk about the struggle to get there. Check out the Featured Stories and Hopeful Climate Fiction lists for further reading. The best way to support the show is to subscribe and share the stories with your friends: BrightGreenFutures.wtf

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/featured-stories

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/hopeful-climate-fiction

Hello friends! In this episode, I chat with Renan Bernardo about how grief weaves through many of his stories, but that, for him, writing solarpunk means bringing readers from those dark depths to a brighter place.

LINKS Ep. 6: Exploring Grief in Climate Ficiton with Author Renan Bernardo

* Virtual Author Panel on Hopepunk (Susan Kaye Quinn, T.K. Rex, Renan Bernardo, Brianna Castognozzi, Watertown Library, Jan 2023)

* A Short Biography of a Conscious Chair by Renan Bernardo (Samovar Magazine, February 2023)

* A Shoreline of Oil and Infinity by Renan Bernardo (Escape Pod #863)

* When It's Time to Harvest by Renan Bernardo (Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors)

* Look to the Sky, My Love by Renan Bernardo (Solarpunk Magazine #1, Nominated for a Utopia Award)

* Different Kinds of Defiance by Renan Bernardo, Short Story Collection (Android Press) including The River that Passed Through My Life (originally published in Portuguese by Editora Dame Blanche)

* Eight Steps to Steal a Yacht and Build a Hospital by Renan Bernardo (Solarpunk Magazine #8)

* The Orchard of Tomorrow by Kelsea Yu (Clarkesworld)

* Solarpunk: Short Stories from Many Futures, edited by Francisco Verso (releases 9.3.2024 in ebook and print)

* Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainabile World edited by Gerson Lodi-Ribeiro, Translated by Fabio Fernandes (World Weaver Press, English translation of the world’s first solarpunk anthology from Brazil and Portugal)

* The Offer of Peace Between Two Worlds by Renan Bernardo (Diabolical Plots)

* The Complete Log of Week 893819—Dana’s Story by Renan Bernardo (Apex Magazine)

* The Plasticity of Being by Renan Bernardo (Reactor Magazine)

(transcript available on substack)

Bright Green Futures is a weekly newsletter/podcast and lifts up stories about a more sustainable and just world and to talk about the struggle to get there. Check out the Featured Stories and Hopeful Climate Fiction lists for further reading. The best way to support the show is to subscribe and share the stories with your friends: BrightGreenFutures.wtf

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/featured-stories

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/hopeful-climate-fiction

Hello Friends! Today we’re going to dig into climate fiction’s place in the larger climate struggle and how understanding activism and movement building can help us to portray in fiction how change really works.

LINKS Ep. 7: Climate Fiction in the Larger Climate Movement

Sustainability Salon page, hosted by Maren Cooke

Sustainability Salon: Hope is a Plant You Can Care For or Kill (Aug 2023) (Susan Kaye Quinn, PDF, recording)

Sustainability Salon: Movement Building (Oct-Nov 2023) (Penn Garvin, recording)

Bill Moyer’s MAP (Movement Action Plan) (The Commons Library, video)

Doing Democracy by Bill Moyer

Bright Green Futures is a weekly newsletter/podcast and lifts up stories about a more sustainable and just world and to talk about the struggle to get there. Check out the Featured Stories and Hopeful Climate Fiction lists for further reading. The best way to support the show is to subscribe and share the stories with your friends: BrightGreenFutures.wtf

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/featured-stories

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/hopeful-climate-fiction

Hello friends! In this episode, I chat with writer and activist Jamie Liu about her award-winning climate-fiction story about loneliness, connection, and resilience.

LINKS Ep. 8: Loneliness, Connection, and Resilience, In Conversation with Writer and Activist Jamie Liu

* To Labor for the Hive by Jamie Liu (2024 winner, Grist Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors)

* GRIST Looking Forward Book Club

* Jamie Liu’s interview with the Climate Fiction Writer’s League (2024)

* Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052 - 2072. It's a long title, by Eman Abdelhadi and M. E. O'Brien.

* Climate Cafe NYC

* Other worldwide Climate Cafes

* Sixth Festival

(transcript available on substack)

Bright Green Futures is a weekly newsletter/podcast and lifts up stories about a more sustainable and just world and to talk about the struggle to get there. Check out the Featured Stories and Hopeful Climate Fiction lists for further reading. The best way to support the show is to subscribe and share the stories with your friends: BrightGreenFutures.wtf

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/featured-stories

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/hopeful-climate-fiction

Hello Friends! Today we’re going to talk about how non-fiction and fiction work together to help us envision a better world.

LINKS Ep. 9: How to Build a Good Anthropocene

* Ministry for the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson

* The Great Derangement by Amitav Ghosh

* Seeds of a Good Anthropocene website

* Taryn O’Neill, producer of Scirens

* Youtube trailer: “The Assignment”

* The Climate Action Almanac

Bright Green Futures is a weekly newsletter/podcast and lifts up stories about a more sustainable and just world and to talk about the struggle to get there. Check out the Featured Stories and Hopeful Climate Fiction lists for further reading. The best way to support the show is to subscribe and share the stories with your friends: BrightGreenFutures.wtf

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/featured-stories

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/hopeful-climate-fiction

Hello friends! In this episode, I chat with writer Ana Sun about her stories that examine adaptation in the climate crisis.

LINKS Ep. 10: Adaptation in Climate Fiction with Writer Ana Sun

* Soul Noodles by Ana Sun (The Bright Mirror: Global Solarpunk by Women anthology)

* Night Fowls by Ana Sun (Solarpunk Creatures anthology)

* Dandelion Brew by Ana Sun (DreamForge)

* Write the Future You Want To Live In by Ana Sun (non-fiction article on solarpunk in DreamForge)

* Ana’s blog post about Night Fowls (also on World Weaver Press)

* The Utopia of Us (contains Ana Sun’s story, published May 28, 2024) a tribute to We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

* Fighting for the Future: Cyberpunk and Solarpunk Tales (contains Ana Sun’s story, The Scent of Green)

* Different Kinds of Defiance by Renan Bernardo

(transcript available on substack)

Bright Green Futures is a weekly newsletter/podcast and lifts up stories about a more sustainable and just world and to talk about the struggle to get there. Check out the Featured Stories and Hopeful Climate Fiction lists for further reading. The best way to support the show is to subscribe and share the stories with your friends: BrightGreenFutures.wtf

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/featured-stories

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/hopeful-climate-fiction

Hello Friends! This episode, we’re going to dive into solarpunk. I often use solarpunk and hopeful climate fiction interchangeably, but solarpunk is also an in-real-life movement and lifestyle. Today we’ll talk about both and how imagining a different world is key to all of it.

LINKS Ep. 11: All About Solarpunk: Literature and Movement

* Dear Alice, Chobani solarpunk yogurt commercial

* Tech Won’t Save Us podcast

* Write the Future You Want to Live In by Ana Sun (DreamForge)

* Pittsburgh’s Solarpunk Future 2024 expo

* Solarpunk Conference: Rays of Resilience, an online solarpunk conference on June 29th 2024

* The Great Derangement by Amitav Ghosh

* Bright Green Future’s list of solarpunk/hopeful climate fiction

Bright Green Futures is a weekly newsletter/podcast and lifts up stories about a more sustainable and just world and to talk about the struggle to get there. Check out the Featured Stories and Hopeful Climate Fiction lists for further reading. The best way to support the show is to subscribe and share the stories with your friends: BrightGreenFutures.wtf

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/featured-stories

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/hopeful-climate-fiction

Hello friends! In this episode, I chat with Grist Editor Tory Stephens about Imagine 2200, Grist’s hopeful climate fiction contest, and how envisioning the future is an important climate solution.

LINKS Ep. 12: Building Movement Through Hopeful Climate Fiction with Editor Tory Stephens

* Grist (Climate.Justice.Solutions), a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future.

* Grist’s Imagine 2200 Climate Fiction and Contest

* The Grist 50: annual list of climate and justice leaders to watch

* Octavia’s Brood by adrienne maree brown

* Daybreak, cooperative tabletop game about the climate

* Dear Tomorrow, sharing personal climate messages

* Climate Imaginarium, center for climate and culture

* Arizona State University, Center for Science and the Imagination

* ASU’s Climate Action Almanac—Bright Green Futures highlighted their trailer in Episode 9

* Submit to Imagine 2200

* The Light Eaters by Zoë Schlanger

* The Great Transition by Nick Fuller Googins

* An AI plots to take over a community’s solar power by Paolo Bacigalupi (Grist)

* Under the Grid: Detroit goes full-on solar in this fictional future by Andrew Dana Hudson (Grist)

(transcript available on substack)

Bright Green Futures is a weekly newsletter/podcast and lifts up stories about a more sustainable and just world and to talk about the struggle to get there. Check out the Featured Stories and Hopeful Climate Fiction lists for further reading. The best way to support the show is to subscribe and share the stories with your friends: BrightGreenFutures.wtf

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/featured-stories

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/hopeful-climate-fiction

Hello Friends! This episode, we’re going to talk about how to exercise our imaginations to envision better futures, whether we’re writers or not, and how that’s a vital tool in our climate solutions toolkit.

LINKS Ep. 13: Envisioning the Future: Exercising Our Imagination

Seven Sisters by Susan Kaye Quinn

Climate Imaginarium, Governor’s Island NYC

Fascism and the Failure of Imagination video by Zoe Bee

(transcript available on substack)

Bright Green Futures is a weekly newsletter/podcast and lifts up stories about a more sustainable and just world and to talk about the struggle to get there. Check out the Featured Stories and Hopeful Climate Fiction lists for further reading. The best way to support the show is to subscribe and share the stories with your friends: BrightGreenFutures.wtf

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/featured-stories

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/hopeful-climate-fiction

Hello friends! In this episode, I chat with Author and Editor Sarena Ulibarri about her novella, Another Life, how she was radicalized by The Conquest of Bread, and how social ecology, anarchism, and communalism inspired her worldbuilding.

LINKS Ep. 14: Imagining Another Life with Author and Editor Sarena Ulibarri

* Solarpunk Summers edited by Sarena Ulibarri

* Solarpunk Winters edited by Sarena Ulibarri

* Solarpunk Creatures (co-edited by Sarena Ulibarri et al)

* The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin

* Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg

* New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson

* Lost Cause by Cory Doctorow

* The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks Dalton

* Metamorphosis anthology published by Milkweed Editions

* Future Fiction, which is run by Francesco Verso in Italy

* Rewriting the Future (Susan Kaye Quinn, DreamForge Magazine)

* Multi-Species Cities co-edited by Sarena Ulibarri et al.

* Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard

* A Hunger with No Name by Lauren C. Teffeau

Bright Green Futures is a weekly newsletter/podcast and lifts up stories about a more sustainable and just world and to talk about the struggle to get there. Check out the Featured Stories and Hopeful Climate Fiction lists for further reading. The best way to support the show is to subscribe and share the stories with your friends: BrightGreenFutures.wtf

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/featured-stories

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/hopeful-climate-fiction

Hello Friends! In this episode, we’re going to talk about the people who publish hopeful climate fiction, both to highlight where you can find new stories and where you can submit your own.

LINKS Ep. 15: Climate Fiction Zines and Small Presses

* Solarpunk Creatures (World Weaver Press)

* Little Blue Marble

* Different Kinds of Defiance by Renan Bernardo (Android Press)

* Metamorphosis collection (published by Milkweed Editions)

* Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Milkweed Editions)

* Grist (Climate.Justice.Solutions), a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future.

* Grist’s Imagine 2200 Collections (2021, 2022, 2023 Editor’s Picks, Best of Audio, 2024)—Submit to Imagine 2200

(transcript available on substack)

Bright Green Futures is a weekly newsletter/podcast and lifts up stories about a more sustainable and just world and to talk about the struggle to get there. Check out the Featured Stories and Hopeful Climate Fiction lists for further reading. The best way to support the show is to subscribe and share the stories with your friends: BrightGreenFutures.wtf

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/featured-stories

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/hopeful-climate-fiction

Hello friends! In this episode, I chat with Author Tashan Mehta about the shapes of stories and how form has to meet function as we tackle storytelling around the climate.

LINKS Ep. 16: The Shapes of Stories with Author Tashan Mehta

* Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta

* Solarpunk Creatures (with Tashan Mehta’s story, Leaf Whispers, Ocean Song)

* The Great Derangement by Amitav Ghosh

* How Forests Think by Eduardo Kohn

* Green Dreamer: Alchemize

* Latitudes of Longing by Shubhangi Swarup

(transcript available on substack)

Bright Green Futures is a weekly newsletter/podcast and lifts up stories about a more sustainable and just world and to talk about the struggle to get there. Check out the Featured Stories and Hopeful Climate Fiction lists for further reading. The best way to support the show is to subscribe and share the stories with your friends: BrightGreenFutures.wtf

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/featured-stories

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/hopeful-climate-fiction

Hello Friends! This episode, we’re going to talk about how to write diversely and why it's so important for climate stories.

LINKS Ep. 17: Diversity in Climate Storytelling

* Writing the Other website, book, classes, resources

Make sure to enter August’s giveaway!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeeal7OH0tiKlUn8HMJtBStjoDgmtcv0cnzHDRMBz6_UxUHNw/viewform

(transcript available on substack)

Bright Green Futures is a weekly newsletter/podcast and lifts up stories about a more sustainable and just world and to talk about the struggle to get there. Check out the Featured Stories and Hopeful Climate Fiction lists for further reading. The best way to support the show is to subscribe and share the stories with your friends: BrightGreenFutures.wtf

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/featured-stories

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/hopeful-climate-fiction

Hello Friends! This episode, we’re going to talk about the four kinds of hope and how to understand the surge in hope and joy that’s happening in this political moment we’re having in America.

LINKS Ep. 18: The Power of Hope

* Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit

* Rewriting the Future (Susan Kaye Quinn, DreamForge Magazine)

* Sue’s website: explainer on hopepunk/solarpunk, short fiction, and novels

Make sure to enter August’s giveaway!

(transcript available on substack)

Bright Green Futures is a weekly newsletter/podcast and lifts up stories about a more sustainable and just world and to talk about the struggle to get there. Check out the Featured Stories and Hopeful Climate Fiction lists for further reading. The best way to support the show is to subscribe and share the stories with your friends: BrightGreenFutures.wtf

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/featured-stories

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/hopeful-climate-fiction

In this episode, I chat with Author BrightFlame about her new witchy solarpunk novel and how the mundane and the supernatural are both entangled with the climate crisis.

LINKS Ep. 19: Witchy Solarpunk with Author BrightFlame

* The Working by BrightFlame

* The Reclaiming Tradition of Witchcraft (BrightFlame’s website)

* Different Kinds of Defiance by Renan Bernardo

* The Spiral Dance by Starhawk

* Thank Geo by BrightFlame (Solarpunk Creatures)

PLEASE SHARE

Tiktok, Facebook, Mastodon, Instagram, Threads

Make sure to enter August’s giveaway!

(transcript available on substack)

Bright Green Futures is a weekly newsletter/podcast and lifts up stories about a more sustainable and just world and to talk about the struggle to get there. Check out the Featured Stories and Hopeful Climate Fiction lists for further reading. The best way to support the show is to subscribe and share the stories with your friends: BrightGreenFutures.wtf

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/featured-stories

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/hopeful-climate-fiction

Hello Friends! In this episode, we’re going to talk about the ideological war that’s rising up all around us, pitting the status quo against our collective desire for a better greener world.

LINKS Ep. 20: Technofeudalists vs. Solarpunk

* Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism by Yanis Varoufakis

(transcript available on substack)

Bright Green Futures is a weekly newsletter/podcast and lifts up stories about a more sustainable and just world and to talk about the struggle to get there. Check out the Featured Stories and Hopeful Climate Fiction lists for further reading. The best way to support the show is to subscribe and share the stories with your friends: BrightGreenFutures.wtf

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/featured-stories

https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/hopeful-climate-fiction