Past Event: Jeff VanderMeer, Banu Subramaniam, Tory Stephens

Writing at the Limits of Narrative: A Panel on Climate Change

About the Speakers

Jeff VanderMeer’s NYT-bestselling Southern Reach trilogy has been translated into over 35 languages. The first novel, Annihilation, won the Nebula Award and Shirley Jackson Award, and was made into a movie by Paramount. Other books include Hummingbird Salamander, A Peculiar Peril, Dead Astronauts, Borne (a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award), and The Strange Bird. Forthcoming work includes Absolution, the fourth Southern Reach novel. VanderMeer has spoken at MIT, Vanderbilt, Columbia, the Smithsonian, and the Guggenheim. Most recently, he gave the John Hersey Memorial Address at the Key West Literary Seminar. His Florida reporting has appeared recently in Current Affairs, TIME, the Nation, and Esquire. VanderMeer lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife Ann, cat Neo, and a yard full of native plants, where he also runs the nonprofit the Sunshine State Biodiversity Group.

Banu Subramaniam is the Luella LaMer Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Wellesley College. Trained as a plant evolutionary biologist, Banu engages the feminist studies of science in the practices of experimental biology and is author of forthcoming Botany of Empire: Plant Worlds and the Scientific Legacies of Colonialism.

Tory Stephens creates opportunities that transform organizations and shift culture. He is a resource generator and community builder for social justice issues, people, and movements. He currently works at Grist Magazine as their climate fiction creative manager, and uses storytelling to champion climate justice, and imagine green, clean, and just futures. In another life he owned a kick-butt streetwear company, and he would have gotten away with eating the last cookie too, if it weren’t for his three meddling kids.