'Yale Climate Connections' champions the rise of the 'cli-fi' literary genre

''Burning Worlds'' is Amy Brady’s monthly column dedicated to examining current trends in climate change fiction, or “cli-fi,” in partnership with Yale Climate Connections at Yale University.



As the new literary genre of cli-fi gathers steam worldwide, the Yale Climate Connections website is getting into the act as well. In her first piece to launch a monthly cli-fi trends column earlier this year, New York literary critic Amy Brady ran a general introductory Q&A article about the rise of cli-fi, with some "reading suggestions" for those who wanted to explore several varieties of cli-fi literature. The Yale Climate Connections website reprinted her column as well.
In her ongoing column, Brady has already interviewed such novelists as Kim Stanley Robinson, Aaron Thier, Annalee Newitz and Ashley Shelby as well as academics such as Malcom Sen and others. And there's more to come.
As the 20th century morphed into the 21st century in the late 1990s, the global landscape of cultural production started to teem with a cornucopia of fictional ''cli-fi'' texts in print and on cinema and TV screens, engaging with the local and global impact of man-made global warming. In academia as well as in popular culture, this rapidly growing body of texts is now commonly referred to by the catchy linguistic portmanteau ''cli-fi.''


Already cli-fi has transitioned from a sub-cultural colloquialism circulating informally around the blogosphere into both a cultural buzzword and a staple academic term as well.

For an extensive bibliography of over 100 academic links, see "Cli-Fi in American Studies: A Research Bibliography,'' an online article by Europe-based researchers Susanne Leikam and Julia Leyda.


Yale Climate Connections is a nonpartisan, multimedia service providing daily broadcast radio programming and original web-based reporting, commentary, and analysis on the issue of climate change, one of the greatest challenges and stories confronting modern society.


Edited by veteran journalist and journalism educator Bud Ward, YCC provides content developed by a network of experienced independent freelance science journalists, researchers, and educators across the country. In doing so, it brings together a dynamic global community of individuals, scientists, educators, and media and communicators in their common pursuit of better understanding and of responsibly addressing climate-related risks.


Yale Climate Connections is an initiative of the Yale Center for Environmental Communication (YCEC), directed by Anthony Leiserowitz of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies on the campus of Yale University.