This fall the Chicago Review of Books, along with more than 170 other media outlets and institutions from around the world, signed on to Covering Climate Now, a project co-founded by Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation. The project’s purpose is to “strengthen the media’s focus on the climate crisis.”
All participating outlets will ramp up their climate coverage during the week of September 16, the week leading up to the international Climate Action Summit hosted by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres in New York on September 23. According to The Nation, this project “now ranks as one of the most ambitious efforts ever to organize the world’s media around a single coverage topic.”
The Chicago Review of Books joined Covering Climate Now because we care deeply about climate change and its devastating effects on humans and other living beings around the planet. For over two years, editor-in-chief Amy Brady has written a monthly column called “Burning Worlds,” wherein she explores how contemporary fiction and poetry are addressing climate change. We also run frequent round-ups of our favorite nonfiction books that speak to global warming and other environmental issues. We cover books for general audiences, because we believe that climate change matters to all readers, not just scientists. Climate change affects everyone and everything, and will continue to do so for generations to come.
As book lovers, we feel the best way to bring greater awareness to climate change is to continue sharing with you some of our favorite books on the issue:
On September 16, we’ll list for you our favorite nonfiction books of 2019 (so far) that address climate change.
On September 17, we’ll run an excerpt from the forthcoming Pigs by Johanna Stoberock, a novel that uses dystopian fabulism to address some of the thornier questions of morality broached by climate change.
On September 18, we’ll run Amy Brady’s September “Burning Worlds” column, featuring an interview with Amitav Ghosh about his recent novel Gun Island, another work of fiction tackling climate.
And on September 19, we’ll run a climate-themed essay by renowned writer Terry Tempest Williams, excerpted from her forthcoming collection Erosion.
This is just the start of what we intend to be a greater and more sustained focus on climate change at the Chicago Review of Books. As the founders of Covering Climate Now, Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope, wrote in The Nation, climate change is “the defining story of our time.” And as a site dedicated to important storytelling, we plan to put the story of climate change front and center.
