CLIMATE
STORIES
What is your climate story?
Telling and understanding our stories of experiencing the climate crisis is a powerful way to build resilience and ignite action.
Starting in 2022, MCAN has held workshops for youth on Crafting Your Own Climate Story, led by teaching artists from The Telling Room. Creative writing is a valuable outlet to share personal impacts of climate change, help process climate anxiety and grief, build collective resilience, and inspire us to action to confront the climate crisis.
Enjoy these youths’ stories!
Crafting Your Own Climate Fiction
Do you want to influence the world with your writing? Are you passionate about climate justice? In this online workshop, Maine Climate Action Now and The Telling Room invite youth writers to craft their own climate fiction ("cli-fi"). We’ll find inspiration in our own climate experiences and in the work of cli-fi writers like Kim Stanley Robinson, Ursula LeGuin, Sam J. Miller, as well as Maine’s own youth cli-fi writer, Leela Marie Hidier. We’ll build a solid writer’s foundation with fiction tools such as character development, world-building, narrative structure, and voice. Participants will have the opportunity to explore dystopian, utopian, fantasy, speculative, and surreal climate imaginings. This is a chance to transform climate anxieties into transformative stories.
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Who: Youth 14-30 years old
When: Tuesdays, Oct. 10 - Nov. 14, 7:00 - 8:30pm
Where: Zoom (online)
Cost: FREE with $135 optional stipend
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Summer 2023
Workshop with the Telling Room at Waterfall Arts in Belfast, ME
"Ignorance is a privilege given to few but claimed by many."
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– Laura Hepner
"But perhaps someday you will sit
On your crumbling porch sinking into the sea
And wonder where these birds are
Tiny bundles of fluffy feathers and energy
Perhaps you will miss them."
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– Scarlet Labbé-Watson
MCAN ran two four-session workshops in 2022, Crafting Your Own Climate Story, with teaching artists from the Telling Room. Youth participants from across the state crafted their personal climate stories, learning and sharing an understanding of their individual place in the climate crisis. These youth writers showed their care about the place they live in and observed the changes around them. All our stories will connect us through understanding the effect the climate crisis is having on our lives and will inspire us to action to confront the climate crisis. Enjoy these youths’ stories!
Fall 2022
Virtual workshop with the Telling Room for youth across the state
"He looked back, savoring the green grass, the crashing waterfall, savoring the memory of it all. He then turned back and walked up the stairs, through the hall, and out the door into his polluted, dry world."
– Ian Seckler
Jerovain Nganzobo
Climate Story
University of Maine at Machias
Age 25
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"No one wishes for their home to crumble
nor to shift with the swelling tides..."
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– Makili Matty
Spring 2022
Our first workshop, 'Telling Your Climate Story', with the Telling Room for youth across the state
"Natua's fury burned hotter than magma. She was brutal. Plague after plague, each more threatening than the last. The ground shook, oceans churned, fires devoured everything. Even the plants and animals answered her call for vengeance, eager to bite back."
– Abigail Holubrinkle
Isabelle Rogers
Eraser
Sunrise Movement Franklin County/MYCJ
Age 21
"The relationships we made in the nearly 4 year legal battle grew into a resilient network of communities across the state. We have seen many victories since, all crucial steps in the direction of water justice."
– Luke Sekera-Flanders
"A little girl sits on the ground in her backyard, tiny fingers deliciously intertwined with the soft blades of grass. The world belongs to her, and she belongs to the world."
– Tamra Benson