Sunday, April 30, 2017

With this genre, Earth just might survive (or not)


With this genre, Earth just might survive (or not)


by Vomisa Caasi


A literary genre can be a showcase for just about anything these days it seems. SFF novels will take you through all kind of fantasy worlds and science fiction sagas. Chick-Lit features strong female protagonists with stories that appeal to women in search of novels with strong female characters. Lab-lit deals with scientists and lab technicians working in, you guessed it, modern scientific, psychology or sociology labs. And a relative new genre dubbed solarpunk envisions positive, optimistic futures using solar power to transform the world into a more equal and sustainable place.


Now comes cli-fi, a rising new literary genre for the 21st century that has been slowly gaining traction among literary critics, authors and readers. Short for ''climate change fiction,'' cli-fi has a Wikipendia page and a dedicated website now and publishers (and Hollywood producers) are paying attention. With this genre, Earth just might survive, or not, depending on how the stories go.
Some of utopian, some are dystopian, and some are just plain page-turners of the cli-fi kind.


There's even a website and a portal for cli-fi now, titled The Cli-Fi Report, at www.cli-fi.net


The genre has no founder and no spokesman, and there's no school of cli-fi and no cli-fi canon. It's write as you write and read as you read. Nobody owns the genre and nobody controls it. A publicist for the genre does spend an inordinate amount of time doing PR chores and connecting with media sites and reporters. But he mostly keeps a low profile and let's the genre speak for itself.


"The purpose of cli-fi is two-fold," says a spokesman online. "One, it's a platform for writers around the world to use to place their stories about global warming and climate change, from whatever point of view they choose to tell them. And two, it's a place for readers and literary critics to congregate and absorb what the writes are creating."


"With this new genre, might it just save the Earth and future generations of humans? No genre can save the Earth, and however man-made global warming plays out, it's far beyond what any novel or movie can do," the spokesman adds. " 
So no, cli-fi is not going to save the Earth. But the stories that are being told and that will be told in the next 100 years might very well help us prepare for what is coming down the road. It's that vital, it's that important. It's not an escapist genre, and it's not for distraction or entertainment. It's a dead serious literary genre with a high calling, and how it plays out over the next few dozen decades will be a vital link in our relationship to the future. If we survive beyond the next 500 years, that is."


''As more and more publishers and Hollywood producers pick up cli-fi novels for publication and adaptation to movies, the rising new genre may very well play an important role in helping prepare future generations for what's coming as the Earth warms beyond its limits and beyond 400 parts of million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," the spokesman says. "Then again, cli-fi just might go nowhere and lead nowhere. If we as a species are doomed, then no literary genre is going to save us. But art and literature can help raise the alarm and prepare us for what's coming for our descendants 30 generations from now."











Tuesday, April 25, 2017

Meet Hannah Fairfield, climate editor with a mission



Meet Hannah Fairfield, Alaskan climate editor with a mission

by staff writer, with agencies

As climate change continues to be debated nationwide pro and con by activists and Trumpists, a new global warming maven is in the spotlight.

Meet Hannah Fairfield, the current editor of the New York Times revamped Climate Desk at the newspaper's Manhattan newsroom. She started in her new position this year after a nationwide search for a chief editor of the section and she's on a roll now, backed by a strong team of veteran reporters and with bunch of new hires coming aboard in June, too.




Born and raised in a rural Alaskan village, Fort Yukon, population 600, mostly Gwich'in Athabascans whose ancestors have lived in Alaska for over 10,000 years,  
​Fairfield
spent the first
​four
 years of her life in the small village along the banks of the Yukon River and then moved with her missionary parents to the big city of Fairbanks to attend
​elementary school and middle school
,
​graduating from
high school in 1992.




Her father was an Episcopalian missionary priest and a small plane pilot, first in Fort Yukon and then in Fairbanks, a university town where the University of Alaska-Fairbanks  is located. In Fort Yukon, her parents lived in the Episcopalian mission church
​log ​
house and offered what services the church could, baptisms, weddings, burials and more. They were one of the few white families in the village and the children cherished their time there.

Think things like Fairbanks at 60 degrees below for three weeks in the winter of 1989! Think life in a subsistence village of rural Alaskans whose ancestors go back centuries! Think boat trips on the Yukon in the summer, fishing for salmon, and yes, eating salmon!
​Lox!​


Hannah's parents went to Fort Yukon in the 1970s  to minister to the indigenous Indians there and attend to their religious and community needs.

Hannah left Alaska when she was 18 to attend college at
​tend Hobart and William Smith Colleges and ​
graduated in1996. Then it was on to Columbia University for two separate master's degrees before landing her first job at the New York Times as a graphic designer, a position she held for 17 years until she was selected inhouse for the Climate Desk gig.

Although there was a nationwide search via a public online advertisement for a new editor of the revamped Climate Desk, with applications coming in from over 1500 candidates, the choice was always going to be an inhouse selection. And it was. Hannah interviewed for the job and she got it.


So what does Alaska mean to this very well-placed climate journalist, Hannah Fairfield? And how has her experience growing up in a Christian missionary family in rural Alaska shaped her views  on nature, God and global warming?

Although a happy and dedicated New Yorker now, and loving it, they say back in Alaska that once you live there you can never really let the place go in your heart and mind and soul -- and in your view of the way the world works. Ask any Alaskan, past or present. It's that kind of place. The Last Frontier.

I know this feeling because I lived in Alaska for 12 years in the 1970s and 1980s -- mostly in Juneau but with two long winters in Nome -- and although I left the state in 1991, I still keep Alaska close in mind and worldview and my experiences there in fact led me to find a home later on
​in ​
the global community of writers, activists
​ and academics studying the issues of man-made global warming. Alaska gave birth to ''cli-fi.''



So with Hannah's  deep rural Alaska
​roots
, I am looking forward to
​her
long and successful 10-year reign 
​as ​
chief climate
​maven
for the New York Times.

Another thing I am looking forward to is the Climate Desk's
​possible ​
new policy of capitalizing the word "Earth" in
​news ​
stories about climate change and global warming, since there is no reason on Earth to keep lowercasing it
​as​
the newspaper
​ of record​
does now. Things change
​at the
Times, with time, and while the newspaper once capitalized the word Internet, it now lowercases it, following the Associated Press's lead. So I am looking forward to the Climate Desk under Hannah Fairfield's direction to start capitalizing the word Earth. For time being, the paper still writes "earth" in lowercase letters even in stories about ac
​t​
ivists working to protect the Earth from runaway global warming, and about indigenous peoples worldwide living with the consequences of climate change in the Arctic, in the Amazon and in Africa and Asia -- Australia, too.

It's not "earth Day" in April every year. It's "Earth Day, with a capital E. It's time for the New York Times to adjust their editorial style and start showing more respect for the Earth, our home planet.

Robert Pirsig: Celebrated ''Zen an the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" author, dies at age 88 - An investigation into the unfactchecked and untrue urban legend that he ''submitted'' the book to 121 publishers before William Morrow said yes



 


Obit factcheckers:


Please do some fact checking before you write your obits next time.


Rober Pirsig did not actually "submit" the book to 121 publishers until William Morrow's savvy young editor James Landis said yes. This remark appeared in virtually every obit about Bob in April 2017 and not one reporter checked this to see if it was true. In fact, the "claim" was  jokey aside by Mr Pirsig in 1974 to an un-named and un-sourced reporter in an early interview, and yet there is no source to this remark. Read below, and next time, stop repeating urban legends that are false and not verified. It makes for sloppy reporting, even for obits.




https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2017/04/25/zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance-author-robert-pirsig-dies/100871394/
 
Why is this ''claim'' still current, and why did the publisher itself go along with this at the very beginning in an interview with the New York Times in May 1974? Well, they William Morrow's PR people ''positioned'' him in the day before social media and the internet as an unknown, mysterious Zen philospher writer and with the PR team saying he was "rejected" by 121 publishers before James Landis said ''yes'' gives readers the impresson that this poor, hapless, hard-working Zen philosopher had been ''rejected'' by the powers that be for a total of 121 book submissions and that makes readers and reporters and  PR people think: "Oh that poor guy, rejected for so long, by so many editors and publishers, but he persevered and soldiered on because he knew he was on to something big and the proof is the book, so read it."


But in fact, this was a false claim that has now become an urban literary legend and it needs to be debunked.




http://www.thespec.com/whatson-story/7260947-robert-pirsig-author-of-counterculture-classic-zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance-dead-at/
 
So people read it based on the PR hype and ''friend of the publisher'' reviews like George Steiner and others. The laydown of the book was a carefully orchestrated PR campaign! And it worked.


And, of course, a great book it was and still is. Robert Pirsig was a genius and a one of kind American philospher, and he was also something of humorist and wit, prone to telling reporters some ''claims''  as jokey asides that he never meant as anything than as little jokey asides.




https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/books/robert-pirsig-dead-wrote-zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance.html?_r=0
 






He made up that ''claim'' of 121 rejections as a jokey aside, nothing more!


Don't any journalists fact check their obits these days?


Apparently ace reporters like the AP's Hillel Italie and the Los Angeles Times Steve Chawkins and the New York Times Paul Vitello never fact-checked this "fact." Why? Because, they reasoned, even if it was not really true, it makes for good copy!
 
And over 100 obits in English and more in other languages took this literary urban legend and ran with it. Why? Again, who cares if it's true or not, it makes good copy.
 
This blogger  did some online research about all this and here's what I found. Draw your own conclusions. Or ask Snopes.com to investigate this.
 
Mark Richardson, a journalist and author in Canada, who I asked about this 121 rejections"claim" [that has become an urban legend now] told me the other day:
 
''Hi Dan:
 
Thanks for writing, and nice to meet you by email. At one point, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was named by the Guinness Book of Records as ''the most rejected book ever to be successfully published.''
 
However,  as is true with much his of 1974 book, the truth is a little less romantic. As I wrote inmy book ''ZEN AND NOW'' about Pirsig, [some excerpts are worth noting:]
 
  1. “I am working on a book with the somewhat unusual title Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and am now looking for a publisher,” wrote Robert Pirsig on June 6, 1968.
  2.  
  3. “The book is, as the title says, about Zen and about motorcycle maintenance, but it is also about a unification of spiritual feeling and technological thought. Part of its thesis is that the division between these is a deep root of the discontent of our age, and it offers some heterodox solutions. Two sample pages are enclosed. If you are interested in seeing more, please let me know.”
  4.  
  5. There’s a famous story of perseverance that of the 122 publishers that were pitched [with a covering letter], and only one accepted Pirsig’s proposal. In fact this is not quite the case.

  6. For a start, Pirsig sent identical copies of the body of his letter to all of them; it could as easily have been 1000 [or just 25 or 30] – the 1960s equivalent of SPAM. As well, [of the two dozen of so cover letter proposals and they were just proposals, the book had not been completed yet when he sent out the queries] 22 of them expressed an interest but only one person, Jim Landis, a 20-something editor who’d been hired just a year earlier at William Morrow, would stick through the full four years of writing to accept the final manuscript. The pitch letter [in 1968] had been addressed to Morrow’s editor-in-chief, John Willey, and consigned to what publishers call the “slush pile” of unsolicited proposals.
  7.  
  8. “What I guess was unusual about Bob’s letter [in 1968] was that he’d gone to the trouble of getting John Willey’s name, so this was a slush-pile letter with a difference,” recalled Landis when [Mark Richardson]  wrote to him. “Had Bob not gotten Willey’s name, it’s possible the letter might not ever have made its way to me.”
  9.  
  10. Landis wrote back [to Pirsig] on June 10 [1968] with encouragement. Pirsig had his response before the journey began. 

 

Mark  continued:


"[Dan, there's more.] In fact, of those 22 that expressed interest and responded, [only] 6 actually engaged in further correspondence with Pirsig about the project, but it was only Landis who eventually offered him an advance, of $3,000 [and landed the book for William Morrow]. And the pitch letters, [whether it was 25 or 30, and nobody alive knows that facts on this], according to those who know the full story, including Landis, [who is still alive and living in happy retirement in New England,] were actually mimeographed - Pirsig wrote a common body and then added the correct person’s name at the beginning of each.
 
''I cannot recall right now where this information came from...... It probably came from newspaper interviews at the time [perhaps the May 1974 New York Times interview by Mr Gent]. Most important, though, is that Pirsig read the manuscript of Mark Richardson's  Zen and Now and corrected several inaccuracies he found in it. He would not have allowed this "claim of 121 rejections" to go through if it was not accurate. [Or would he?]
 
Hope this helps,
 
Mark



I replied to Mark immediately, thanking him for his update and heads up, writing:



"Dear Mark,
Yare a gentleman and a scholar. That is exactly what I was looking
 for. Thanks so much.
This is all trivial and not important. A great thinker has died. That's what is important. Of course.''


And a second correspondent Ian Glendinning in the UK, also told me this:


"Dear Dan,
The crack that Robert Pirsig made in an early interview about "having 120 rejections but you only need 1 acceptance" was a jokey rhetorical reference to these basic facts in an interview he gave after the book was published in 1974, as you suggest. "


Ian sent me some links form his blog research, too:


The source is Santos and Steele's "Guidebook to ZMM" also confirmed in private correspondence with the author and Mark Richardson's correspondence with Landis.

The crack about "having 120 rejections but you only need 1 acceptance" is a jokey rhetorical reference to these basic facts in an interview, as you suggest. .



THIS BLOGGER CONCLUDES:


So in conclusion, it is NOT TRUE that Robert Pirsig's cover letter or his book (which was not even written yet) was ''rejected'' by 121 publishers at first. And it is not true that he even sent out 122 covers letters. No one can verify that, and given Pirsig's 1960s sense of humour and his way of dealing with the media, he most likely sent out 25-30 cover letters by snail mail, with 22 of the editors expressing some ''interest'' but only Landis at William Morrow was able to use his savvy publishing and PR skills to ''get'' the book. Or as we would say today "get the get."

Don't believe me. Ask James Landis. I asked him today personally and he told me this, replying to my questions in internet time:


[Dear Dan], I have no idea about 122 of us [publishers or even how many he sent the pitch to]. After 4 years of waiting, 5 or 6 of us [publishers] got the entire [manuscript] and no one else bid [but me], thank goodness."


Jim Landis also taught me an important lesson in his internet answer to me, noting [that no matter how many ''covering letters'' or manuscripts of the completed book that Pirsig sent out, or the number of rejections he received, and nobody knows the true exact number except Bob, who is no longer with us, one must remember that]: ''Rejection (in writing and in life) comes in (too) many forms."


''Rejection (in writing and in life) comes in (too) many forms."  -- Jim Landis


 


So even Bob Pirsig's editor and publisher Jim Landis does not know for a fact exactly how many ''covering letters'' Bob actually sent out, whether it was 25 or 30 or "over 100" or 122. And the number is not important? The main thing is that Pirsing was a genius and he was persistent and the book finally found a savvy publisher who knew how to market the book and it made publishing history, and you yourself, dear reader of this blog post, no matter what age you are now, YOU READ THE BOOK, TOO!

RIP, Robert Pirsig. Long live Robert Pirsig! Whose spirit still lives on!







 

Monday, April 24, 2017

When the New York Times climate desk speaks, the world listens: Meet Hannah Fairfield, editor with a mission




Meet Hannah Fairfield, the new editor of the New York Times revamped Climate Desk. She started in her new position this year after a nationwide search for a chief editor of the section and she's on a roll now,backed by a strong team of veteran reporters and with bunch of new hires coming aboard in June, too, including Brad Plumer coming over from Vox, where they do capitalize the word "Earth."


Born and raised in a rural Alaskan village, Fort Yukon, population 600, mostly Gwich'in Athabascans whose ancestors have lived in Alaska for over 10,000 years,  Hannah spent the first 4 years of her life in the small village along the banks of the Yukon River and then moved with her missionary parents to the big city of Fairbanks to attend grades 1 to  12, finishing high school in 1992.


http://www.nytco.com/hannah-fairfield-to-lead-climate-coverage/


Her father was an Episcopalian missionary priest, first in Fort Yukon and then in Fairbanks, a university town where the University of Alaska-Fairbanks (UAF)  is located. In Fort Fukon, her parents lived in the Episcopalian mission church house and offered what services the church could, baptisms, weddings, burials and more. They were one of the few white families in the village and the children cherished their time there.


Think things like Fairbanks at 60 degrees below for three weeks in the winter of 1989! Think life in a subsistence village of rural Alaskans whose ancestors go back centuries! Think boat trips on the Yukon in the summer, fishing for salmon, and yes, eating salmon!


Hannah's parents went to Fort Yukon in the 1970s  to minister to the indigenous Indians there and attend to their religious and community needs.


Hannah left Alaska when she was 18 to attend college at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and graduated in1996. Then it was on to Ciolumbia University for two separate master's deegrees before landing her first job at the New York Times as a graphic designer, a position she held for 17 years until she was selected inhouse for the Climate Desk gig.


Although there was a nationwide search via a public online advertisement for a new editor of the revamped Climate Desk, with applications coming in from over 1500 candidates, the choice was always going to be an inhouse selection. And it was. Hannah interviewed for the job and she got it.


So what does Alaska mean to this very well-placed climate journalist, Hannah Fairfield? And how has her experience growing up in a Christian missionary family in rural Alaska shaped her views  on nature, God and global warming?


Although a happy and dedicated New Yorker now, and loving it, they say back in Alaska that once you live there you can never really let the place go in your heart and mind and soul -- and in your view of the way the world works. Ask any Alaskan, past or present. It's that kind of place. The Last Frontier.


I know this feeling because I lived in Alaska for 12 years in the 1970s and 1980s -- mostly in Juneau but with two long winters in Nome -- and although I left the state in 1991 to live in Asia, I still keep Alaska close in mind and worldview and my experiences there in fact led me to find a home later on the global community of a artists, writers, dreamers and climate activists.


So with Hannah's  deep rural Alaska credentials, I am looking forward to a long and successful 10-year reign  at chief climate reporter for the New York Times.



PS -- Another thing I am looking forward to is the Climate Desk's new policy of capitalizing the word "Earth" in stories about climate change and global warming, since there is no reason on Earth to keep lowercasing it the newspaper does now. Things change the Times, with time, and while the newspaper once capitalized the word Internet, it now lowercases it, following the Associated Press's lead. So I am looking forward to the Climate Desk under Hannah Fairfield's direction lobbying the newspapers Style and Standards editors to start capitalizing the word Earth. For time being, the paper still writes "earth" in lowercase letters even in stories about acivists working to protect the Earth from runaway global warming, and about indigenous peoples worldwide living with the conseqences of climate change in the Arctic, in the Amazon and in Africa and Asia -- Australia, too.


It's not "earth Day" in April every year. It's "Earth Day, with a capital E. It's time for the New York Times to adjust their editorial style and start showing more respect for the Earth, our home planet.


This is how Dean Baquet punctuates the word EARTH in his memo to NYT staffers:


With Hannah’s appointment, we aim to build on what has already been dominant coverage of climate change and to establish The Times as a guide to readers on this most important issue. The subject has taken on more urgency as the earth’s temperature continues to break records and a new political leadership in Washington appears poised to make sweeping changes to policies meant to limit carbon emissions.
-- Dean, Joe and Matt”


Wouldn't it look better to readers, Dean, if you had written....?


....The subject has taken on more urgency as the Earth’s temperature continues to break records and a new political leadership in Washington appears poised to make sweeping changes to policies meant to limit carbon emissions.


NOTES:


After previously holding a senior graphics editor position, Hannah Fairfield will now serve as climate editor for The New York Times. In this role, she will overseeing climate change coverage, which crosses a variety of topical desks and global bureaus. Fairfield rejoined the NYT in 2012 as senior graphics editor after a stint as graphics editor for The Washington Post from 2010 to 2012. She served as graphics editor at The New York Times from 2000 through 2010. Follow The New York Times on Twitter.  



John Dos Passos' grandson keeps the author's literary flame alive

John Dos Passos' grandson keeps
the  author's literary flame alive



staff writer and agencies


http://www.johndospassos.com/



In recent years the life and times (and novels) of  the great American writer John Dos Passos have  gotten more media attention worldwide and now his grandson has set up a website to keep the flame alive. There are also literary conferences planned in Boston and Portugal for 2017 and 2018,  with more to come.


A panel on Dos Passos is scheduled in late May at a literary conference in Boston.
The John Dos Passos Society, the American academic society devoted to study of his work, is busy preparing for a conference in Boston in May 2017.


In the times we live in now, the popularity of the American writer has gone up, especially after the election of Donald Trump as president in the fall of 2016.


Here is just some of what's been happening in recent years.


Dos Passos has appeared in film, either as a character (in the HBO film "Hemingway and Gelhorn") or as the subject of Sonia Tercero Ramiro's documentary "Robles, Duel al Sol," which recounts the author's friendship with the scholar Jose Robles, the first Spanish translator of "Manhattan Transfer," who was executed under very mysterious circumstances during the Spanish Civil War.
This friendship is also recounted in the recent Spanish-language nonfiction book by Ignacio Martinez titled "Enterrar a Los Muertos" (To Bury the Dead), which has already come out in an English-language translation.


Finally, a book on the friendship between Ernest Hemingway and Dos Passos has recently been published by James McGrath Morris titled "The Ambulance Drivers."


In academia, the John Dos Passos Society, founded in 2011, has given scholars a means to channel their energies. The society held its first conference in 2014 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and its second in Madrid, Spain. The international enthusiasm for Dos Passos has prompted the society to hold its third conference in Lisbon, Portugal in 2018.


A number of events have converged to make Dos Passos seem more relevant than ever, including the 100th anniversary of the First World War, which Dos Passos witnessed first-hand as an ambulance driver near Verdun. Much of his early and mid-career fiction is haunted by this war.


Secondly, Dos Passos understood better than most writers of his age the pervasiveness of technology in the everyday lives, and even the cognitive processes, of humans.


Thirdly, our present political moment has proven Dos Passos to have been  unnervingly prescient. Dos Passos's observations, in both his fiction and non-fiction, track the rise of mass conformity on both the left and right.


Since the year 2000, America has seen swift and dramatic political shifts, from the neoconservatism of George W. Bush, to the election of the first African-American president, to the rise of nativist nationalism under Donald Trump.


One wonders if the country really knows what it wants any more than the characters who populate so much to Dos Passos fiction know. These shifts may also reflect that of the writer himself, who by the mid-1930s abandoned his leftist leanings for a more conservative vision, seeing the latter as the better alternative for preserving individual rights in a century increasingly overrun with the collusion of big government and big business.


 In addition, the author's grandson, John Dos Passos Coggin, who is a writer himself, has been working hard with his mother and other family members keeping Dos Passos's writings relevant with a dedicated literary  website.


See also:


https://blog.utc.edu/news/2016/08/professor-alumna-impact-international-literary-scene/


================


NOTES


The John Dos Passos Society was founded in 2011 by Aaron Shaheen, UC Foundation Associate Professor of English and Victoria Bryan, who received her BA and MA in English at UTC. 

Bryan’s initial interest in Dos Passos was sparked as a graduate student when she took a Modern American Novelist course taught by Shaheen.
“We read Dos Passos’s 42nd Parallel, and I couldn’t believe that I’d never heard this man’s name before, much less read any of his work.” Bryan
​said
, “Here was a writer tuned into the class and race struggles of the early 20th century, and though there are a few problems with how he represents women and minorities scattered throughout his work, he was leaps and bounds ahead of his contemporaries when it came to more complex and interesting understandings of characters who weren’t white males.”As Bryan went on to complete her PhD, her interest in Dos Passos persisted. In 2011 she organized a Dos Passos Panel at the American Literature Association Convention in Boston, MA. Shaheen presented as one of the speakers. It was at this conference that the two were inspired to create the John Dos Passos Society.
In October 2014, UTC hosted the first biennial conference, which featured the author’s grandson, John Dos Passos Coggin, as its keynote speaker.
Ever since Dos Passos’s novel Manhattan Transfer (1925) was translated into Spanish in 1927, the author has been widely read in Spain and other European countries. The international appreciation for his works has lasted to this day.
Ten different nations were represented at the conference, including Brazil, the United States, Portugal, Croatia, Denmark, Sweden, and Spain. The conference received widespread coverage in the Spanish print and digital media, including
​a
write-up in Spain’s leading daily newspaper, El Mundo.


The John Dos Passos Society, the American academic society devoted to study of his work, is busy preparing for a conference in Boston in May 2017.

Victoria Bryan is one of the co-founders of the John Dos Passos Society. She earned her PhD in English from the University of Mississippi and is an English faculty member at Cleveland State Community College in Cleveland, TN.
She says: "Since our founding in 2011, we’ve grown astronomically. We held our first international conference in 2016, and our membership has grown to almost 100 people. We’re represented at the American Literature Association on a regular basis, and we’re able to sponsor panels at various regional conferences.
She hopes the Boston conference this May will be an invigorating event marked by complex conversation about Dos Passos’s work and legacy.




She adds: "I always enjoy our teaching panels. They introduce so many avenues for bringing Dos Passos into the classroom, which may be one of the most powerful ways to bring an author’s work to a new generation. ''


At a previous conference in Chattanooga, she  presented a paper on Dos Passos’s involvement with prison writing and representations of prison during the 20s, 30s, and 40s.


"As I’ve continued researching the topic, I have things I’d certainly change about the paper, but the idea that Dos Passos struggled with how the U.S. prison system worked, particularly in relation to political prisoners, was a huge takeaway from my time in the Dos Passos archives at the University of Virginia in 2014. I was excited to be able to present on those findings, she says.


What was the last article or book by Dos Passos that she read and why?
''I’ve been re-reading the archival documents from UVA on prisons, particularly those that relate to Eugene Debs’ imprisonment, which Dos Passos seems to have been particularly troubled by. (In a somewhat related vein, I’ve been reading Eugene Debs’ Walls and Bars about his political beliefs, his prison time, and his run for Presidential office while incarcerated.) I’m hoping to develop my ideas about Dos Passos and prison writing further for more lengthy writing projects.''
"Dos Passos wrote very passionately about political freedom, and was adamantly opposed to the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. His writing about these topics is powerful. I’ve often used his poem published in The New Masses “They Are Dead Now” in writing and lit classes in prison and in the free world to demonstrate that writing by and about incarcerated people deserves a place in our canon."
When asked what new books she'd recommend and why, she said:
I’m currently reading Margaret Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last. It’s about a devastating financial recession that leads to many losing their homes and livelihoods. The solution to this problem is to allow people to move into posh neighborhoods that have been abandoned, but they only get to live there half the year. The other half of the time they have to live in the local prison. It sounds so dystopian, but for many in our country and around the world, this isn’t so far from reality.​"








Saturday, April 22, 2017

Why doesn't the new editor of the NYT Climate Desk push to have her top brass allow her to start capitalizing the word "EARTH"? In this memo, even top EDITOR of NYT lowercases it as "earth." How can he be so wrong?

Why doesn't the new editor of the NYT Climate Desk push to have her top brass allow her to start capitalizing the word "EARTH"? In this memo, even top EDITOR of NYT lowercases it as "earth." How can he be so wrong?


RE:

Hannah Fairfield is now Leading Climate Coverage at the NYT which still sadly lowercases the word "earth" and will continue to do so until enough people raise their voices to Hannah, Dean, Matt and Joe  to get them to start capitalizing it.

See this example of how they lowercase the name of the planet we live on: -- The subject has taken on more urgency as the earth’s temperature continues to break records and a new political leadership in Washington appears poised to make sweeping changes to policies meant to limit carbon emissions.

It should be (get me write): The subject has taken on more urgency as the Earth’s temperature continues to break records and a new political leadership in Washington appears poised to make sweeping changes to policies meant to limit carbon emissions.
IMG_16083 copy.jpg

Alaskan native Hannah Fairfield, above, is now leading The Times’s climate coverage. Read more in this note from Dean Baquet, Joe Kahn and Matt Purdy where they lowercase the word "earth" when it SHOULD BE Capital E "Earth".....


“No topic is more vital than climate change and covering it requires drive, creativity and more than a little bit of specialized knowledge. We are thrilled to announce that we found an editor with all those qualities – and more – to lead our climate coverage: Hannah Fairfield.


Besides leadership skills that have impressed everyone in the Washington bureau and the graphics department, Hannah has tremendous visual storytelling power that is vital to telling the story of the havoc wreaked by climate change. ...... She grew up in Alaska, where the effects of rising temperatures are real and measurable, and she has two master’s degrees from Columbia, one in journalism and the other in environmental science, with a thesis in geochemistry.


Hannah has assembled and now leads a team of reporters and editors to cover the science of the globe’s changing climate and its political, economic, technological and social and CULTURAL and LITERARY consequences of cli-fi novels and movies.


The coverage will range from the work of scientists to the decisions of CEOs to the struggles of people living with rising seas and deepening drought.


Her team will draw together reporters covering climate change and its implication now working on a variety of desks. She will expand the group to enhance its explanatory, investigative and visual skills and to give our coverage a global reach and by including the rise of the new genre of cli-fi in literature and movies.


With Hannah’s appointment, we aim to build on what has already been dominant coverage of climate change and to establish The Times as a guide to readers on this most important issue.


The subject has taken on more urgency as the earth’s temperature continues to break records and a new political leadership in Washington appears poised to make sweeping changes to policies meant to limit carbon emissions.


signed
Dean, Joe and Matt”


That's Dean Baquet, Matt Purdy and Joe Kahn. Come on, guys, get with it! EARTH should be capitalized now. Wake up!


======


PS:


The Times’ approach involves a team of journalists dedicated to the climate and environment beat. Hannah Fairfield, who began her career as a graphics editor at the newspaper in 2000, started in February as the Times’ climate editor, a newly created position. Her experience also includes a two-year stint as graphics director at The Washington Post.


Fairfield’s team of reporters and editors includes John M. Broder, Coral Davenport, Henry Fountain, Justin Gillis, Nadja Popovich, John Schwartz, and Tatiana Schlossberg. Fairfield’s mission, she says, includes developing explanatory stories as well as stories with a visual component, such as video, photography and graphics.


At The Washington Post, a major Times competitor, climate change coverage is distributed across several desks and journalists, says Laura Helmuth, editor of the paper’s health, science, and environment team. Her writers include Darryl Fears and Brady Dennis, who cover climate change as part of their beat. Meteorologists Jason Samenow and Angela Fritz, along with financial reporters Chris Mooney and Steven Mufson also contribute. Suzanne Goldenberg, recently hired as an editor on the financial team, will work with Mooney and Mufson on an energy and environment blog. Rounding out the effort are several other political reporters who frequently cover climate policy and politics, including Juliet Eilperin, who focuses on the White House, and Lisa Rein, who deals with Congress.


In response to the Trump administration’s intense politicization of the issue, The Post now dedicates more resources to covering climate policy, says Helmuth. “We’re still greatly outnumbered by The New York Times’ dedicated climate staff,” she notes, “but that is the case for most departments.”
The Times’ Fairfield also notes a Trump factor, but in her case it involves the challenge of finding the right coverage balance between breaking climate policy news out of Washington, D.C., and stories about the global effects of climate change. “We have so much to cover in Washington right now, but there are really big stories about climate refugees and cities that are threatened and desperately trying to adapt to climate change,” she says.

For Earth Day 2017, the another cool website posts another ''cli-fi'' listicle on 14 of the best ''cli-fi'' novels of recent years, from Bacigalupi to Atwood to Ballard and more...

For Earth Day 2017, the another cool website posts another ''cli-fi'' listicle on 15 of the best ''cli-fi'' novels of recent years, from Bacigalupi to Atwood to Ballard and 11 more:





14 cli-fi books about climate change's worst case scenarios



Your 2017 ''Earth Day'' reading list


Today is Earth Day 2017, an occasion used to highlight environmental awareness and the state of our planet’s health. Climate change has become a major focus in recent decades, and while 120 nations across the world ratified the Paris Agreement at COP21 a year ago, significant challenges remain in the years and decades to come. Which is to say that to think about climate science is to think seriously and passionately about the future.



Of course one group that keeps a close eye on what the future might hold for civilization are climate change fiction authors. For decades, they have used the idea of a changing climate in their stories, extrapolating the latest scientific evidence into tale of how humanity is coping (or not) with rising sea levels and temperatures.


We’ve collected eight stories that explore climate science and what the future could hold for us.

The MaddAddam trilogy, Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood is getting a lot of attention post-Trump election for her 1985 dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale and its TV adaptation, but it would be a mistake to overlook her MaddAddam novels: Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam. In the critically acclaimed cli-fi trilogy, Atwood follows the survivors of a biological catastrophe in a post apocalyptic future. The novels tracks several characters as they witness the end of the world, with rising sea levels and environmental degradation a major factor. Over the three books, she addresses how her characters cope with existing in a radically changed world, and the steps they must take to rebuild civilization once again.

The Windup Girl and The Water Knife, Paolo Bacigalupi

Over the course of his career, Paolo Bacigalupi focused on environmental issues, especially in his novels. The Windup Girl is a particularly chilling take on what the future could hold. Set centuries in the future, the oceans have risen and fossil fuels depleted, all while plagues and mutated invasive species cause widespread famine across the world. The book follows several characters in a futuristic Thailand. They struggle to survive in a world defined by genetic engineering and cutthroat businessmen who will stop at nothing to make a profit. The Water Knife takes place closer to the present, but presents a future that’s no less dire. Climate change has ravaged the American southwest. The novel’s characters seek something even more valuable than gold: the rights to control the region’s water supply. In both novels, Bacigalupi points to economic inequality as a huge contributing factor for the changes that destroyed the climate.
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California, Edan Lepucki

Edan Lepucki’s debut cli-fi California was more of literary take on climate change than some of the other selections on this list, though it shares an interest in the lengths people will go to survive when civilization begins to collapse. Cal and Frida have escaped into the woods following the general destruction of society from a mix of economic and climate upheavals. They etch out a living by themselves. When Frida discovers that she’s pregnant, they seek out shelter with a nearby settlement, only to find that the closed-knit community is rife with paranoia and secrets. Lepucki’s novel looks back at some of the earliest tropes in American literature to show that the communities that people take refuge in can be just as dangerous as the world they offer protection against.


The Drowned World J.G. Ballard

J.G. Ballard’s 1962 cli-fi novel is considered one of the best examples of early climate change fiction. The polar ice caps have melted and submerged much of the Northern hemisphere. As a biologist in London sets off on a mapping expedition, Ballard uses the novel to explore the unconscious impulses of humanity’s survivors. As the world regresses, so to do its inhabitants. The morals that held society together disintegrate, and civilization unravels.

The Broken Earth trilogy, N.K. Jemisin

N.K. Jemisin’s books are some of the most original and eye-opening fantasies being published today, and these books have a particularly vibrant take on survival. Jemisin’s world goes through cycles of catastrophes that upend humanity each time. The stress of the continual shifts leads to an oppressed people known as orogenes — mutated, or maybe just magical — who can use their powers to alter the planet, for better or worse. Jemisin investigates the alienation of her characters, and explores how society reacts when constantly bombarded by trauma. 

New York 2140, Kim Stanley Robinson

We recently reviewed Kim Stanley Robinson’s new cli-fi novel, and New York 2140 is book that likely paints the most realistic climate change scenario. Set over 120 years in the future, the inhabitants of New York City’s MetLife Tower make their way through life amidst rising tides. While it’s an optimistic and even funny novel, he uses the book to lay out the connections between unfettered capitalism and a warming climate, and warns that unless society-changing fixes are made, we will live with the consequences.
         

Area X Trilogy, Jeff Vandermeer

If you’re looking for something a bit more horrifying (as if these futures aren’t terrifying enough) look no further than Jeff Vandermeer’s climate change fiction novels Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance. The Area X trilogy blends a changing world and climate with otherworldly and outright unexplainable horror. A large portion of the southern coast is abruptly cut off by a barrier, allowing the regions it contains to revert to pristine wilderness. Subsequent expeditions to the territory reveal a strange and hostile world that’s slightly wrong. Vandermeer uses the novels to analyze how we adapt to strange new surroundings.

Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins

Like Bacigalupi’s cli-fi The Water Knife, Claire Vaye Watkins sets her cli-fi novel in an American southwest that’s been ravaged by drought. The region’s remaining inhabitants —Mojavs — are prevented from escaping to better homes by armed vigilantes and an uncaring government. A pair of survivors, Luz and Ray, get by in one of the governmental settlements, and when they discover an abandoned child, they are moved to escape their broken and violent home to find a better home.