Writers across disciplines who explore our impact on the planet through their writing and whose genres have served to inform, move, and inspire action.
Chantal Bilodeau
Chantal Bilodeau is a Montreal-born, New York-based playwright whose work focuses on the intersection of storytelling and climate change. She is the founder of the Arts & Climate Initiative and in her capacity as artistic director, has spearheaded local and global initiatives for over a decade. She has been instrumental in getting the theatre and educational communities, as well as audiences in the U.S. and abroad, to engage in climate action through programming that includes live events, talks, publications, workshops, national and international convenings, and a worldwide distributed theatre festival that coincides with the United Nations COP meetings. As a playwright, Chantal is working on a series of eight plays that look at the social and environmental changes taking place in the eight Arctic states. In 2019, she was named one of “8 Trailblazers Who Are Changing the Climate Conversation” by Audubon Magazine.
Jessica Hernandez
Dr. Jessica Hernandez (Binnizá & Maya Ch’orti’) is a transnational Indigenous scholar, scientist, and community advocate based in the Pacific Northwest. She has an interdisciplinary academic background ranging from marine sciences to environmental physics. She advocates for climate, energy, and environmental justice through her scientific and community work and strongly believes that Indigenous sciences can heal our Indigenous lands.
She is the author of Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science and is currently in the process of writing her second book, Growing Papaya Trees: Nurturing Indigenous Roots of Climate Displacement & Justice. Hernandez has been named by Forbes as one of the 100 most powerful & influential women of Central America.
Kim Stanley Robinson
Kim Stanley Robinson is an American science fiction writer. He is the author of more than 20 books, including The Ministry for the Future, the international bestselling Mars trilogy, and more recently 2312, which was a New York Times bestseller nominated for all seven of the major science fiction awards—a first for any book. In 2008 he was named a “Hero of the Environment” by Time magazine, and he works with the Sierra Nevada Research Institute, the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, and UC San Diego’s Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination. He has won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy awards. In 2016 he was given the Heinlein Award for lifetime achievement in science fiction, and asteroid 72432 was named “Kimrobinson.” In 2017 he was given the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society.