I write, teach, and make magic to answer this question:
How will we bring forward a just, regenerating world?
My contributions:
I write hopeful, solarpunk futures
My solarpunk novel The Working is available in all the places. It embeds tools for resilience and hope. Consider ordering it through your local bookshop or library.
The Working was just selected as one of the five best solarpunk books! I’m in excellent company!
A modern coven must thwart a looming eco-cataclysm and find the key to the bright futures we need.
Fans of The Once and Future Witches and The City We Became will love The Working for its feminist, justice-seeking, ensemble cast. Readers hail The Working for its diverse characters, real magical practice, and tilt towards hope.
See here for more about The Working including Praise For and links to purchase.
Learn more about my published fiction and nonfiction on my Writing page.
Check out the latest interviews, panels, guest blogs, and pods with me on my Media page!
I teach to change the world
My workshops for magical and mainstream audiences boost interconnection and help us stay centered and resilient. I craft experiential and acclaimed sessions whether teaching at a Reclaiming Tradition Witchcamp, offering a weekend with Starhawk, offering solarpunk workshops for writers, or working with public school teachers to bring climate imaginaries to the classroom.
Next up: Winter Witchcamp, just passed, was timely and powerful. Next, I head to Sacred Space/Between the Worlds and in March, the Sirens Conference.
See my Schedule tab for the latest and watch for online and in-person workshops aligned with the magic of The Working.
I particularly enjoy offering Storying Regenerative Futures and How to Solarpunk for both mainstream and magical audiences. Let me know if you’d like me to customize a workshop for your group.
I make magic for the world as a Solarpunk Witch
Solarpunk? Search “solarpunk” on my site for much more information. You might start with this post. Many have asked why I use the word Witch. See this post for more on that. Like others, I reclaim the word Witch as a descriptor of my Earth-based spiritual path. I’m proud to be part of the non-hierarchical, ecofeminist, antiracist, activist, evolving Reclaiming Tradition.
More about me HERE
For Bright Futures!
p.s. I’m on Mastodon! (And much less on meta platforms.) See all my socials up top or in the footer.
Fiction fills me with wonder, possibilities, truth, wisdom, beauty, hope. Following are books I commend to you. One of my all-time favorites is at the top of the list. See the full Great Reads for all the books, many solarpunk or diverse speculative fiction:
- A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys is one of the best solarpunk books I've read. Keeping at top of list!
- What a Fish Looks Like by Syr Hayati Beker. Via a surreal, atypical format, we follow some who will leave on a spaceship and some who'll stay when Earth will no longer support life as we know it.
- Proud Pink Sky by Redfern Jon Barrett. Engaging alternate history where Berlin is the first gay state. With solarpunk aspects, the author describes the novel as ambitopian.
- Saltcrop by Yume Kitasei is a chilling post-apocalyptic story where one corporation controls the world's food supply. When one sister is missing, the other two undertake a harrowing journey.
- Ice's End by P. Finian Reilly. Climate fiction with solarpunk tilt interwines historic and futuristic plots set in Antarctica. A future when Earth's fresh water is scarce and one corporation is the de facto global government as the only supplier.
- How to Surf a Hurricane by Todd Medema. A high seas heist for noble but misguided purposes. Cast includes a professional hurricane surfer and a corporate inventor. Solarpunk leaning climate fiction.
- Neon Riders by AE Marling. Cyberpunk slips towards solarpunk in this engaging ride where right-wing religious extremists want the resources of the sustainable, mutually governed, solarpunk city that San Francisco has become.
- Different Kinds of Defiance by Renan Bernardo. Amidst climate-changed Brazil, Renan drills deep into characters as he offers #solarpunk tech for the future. Touching and amazing stories that I highly recommend!
- Be the Sea by Clara Ward. I highly recommend this eco-lit, climate fiction with diverse (including neurodiverse) characters. The author weaves in marine biology and offers sea creature points of view in a very immersive way.
- The Madonna Secret by Sophie Strand is a potent historical retelling: Jesus turns away from Mary Magdalene's affinity with Nature and the Earth to step into patriarchal culture. And we know how that ended up.
- Troubled Waters by Mary Annaïse Heglar is based on her family's history of Black resistance and desegregation in the 1950s, told within a story of modern-day climate crisis.
- Private Rites by Julia Armfield is intense psychological family drama in a drowning city. Chilling & dystopian.
- All City by Alex DiFrancesco is solarpunk reminiscent of Doctorow's Lost Cause. Community created by those left behind after Brooklyn floods.
- Sordidez by E.G. Condé is a wonderful Taino/Indigenous Futurist read where Indigenous folx survive and ultimately reclaim their lands from settler-colonists. Shows what's truly important in the world.
- Weird Fishes by Rae Mariz is eco- and climate fiction at its best from nonhuman views including cephalopods, sea mammals, and coral. Incorporates science and Indigenous lore
- Another Life by Sarena Ulibarri is an excellent solarpunk novella by an author-anthologist who has helped shape solarpunk
- The Lost Cause by Cory Doctorow offers some actionable solarpunk for our current world. A lot of dialogue and philosophizing amidst a feasible storyline to in-fill urban areas to accommodate climate refugees and build resilient communities.
- The Fifth Sacred Thing and sequel City of Refuge by Starhawk are classic solarpunk from before we called it that
Find the full list with book annotations: HERE
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Binaries create harm. I explore the nonbinary of dystopia and hopeful fiction ... and much more.
Why are authors reticent to write hopeful fiction? Several cons I took part in this year had panels on dystopias, on hopeful fiction, and adjacent topics.
Perhaps you’ve encountered people who dismiss solarpunk as unrealistic, sappy, or fairy-tale thinking. Enter TechnoShaman and Black anarchist Elijah Claude’s excellent response. Here's his guest post.
Given fascist, authoritarian takeovers in the US, I offer ways to resist...and have fun doing it. Plus, a bit on technofascism and data privacy.
Imagining bright green futures is the first step in getting there. In this post I share the future I desire and inspirations for my stories.
Beech trees offer a spark of inspiration. Some thoughts on how to be bright, how to catch inspiration.