Interview with a ghost writer [from 2013]

QUESTION: In a literaray magazine essay you wrote in 2013, you noted that ''the signs are everywhere that the climate in which human civilization developed is gone, seems a natural subject for fiction, and a number of recent novels have grappled with it—Nathaniel Rich’s “Odds Against Tomorrow,” Barbara Kingsolver’s “Flight Behavior,” and Ian McEwan’s “Solar” among them." What inspired you or motivated you to approach this subject way back then when very few literary critics or culture observers were talking about this topic?

ANSWER:

QUESTION: Then you opined, and again, it was July 2013, still early days:

"These books have been labelled “cli-fi,” but chances are that the name won’t stick. It makes the genre sound marginal, when, in fact, climate change is moving to the center of human experience.''

What inspired you to make such a premature judgment about cli-fi [''CHANCES ARE THAT THE NAME WON'T STICK''] ....when the genre term was still just in its infancy in pop culture mentions and opeds? Do you regret now, 6 years later, having written that premature pronoucement 6 years ago, and if so, why do you regret it?

ANSWER:

QUESTION: Was that essay assigned to you by your editor at that magazine where at the time you were not a staff writer as you are now, but at that time a contributing writer and not on staff per se? Or did you come up with the idea of the essay yourself and pass it by your editor to get their greenlight and see if the magazine would publish it?

ANSWER:

QUESTION: Looking back now, what would you say about cli-fi today, in 2019? The name obviously did stick, and why do you think it did stick?


ANSWER: