‘Trust your own voice:’ Rangatahi writers tasked to imagine climate changed futures
Rangatahi writers are tasked to imagine a climate-changed future, with a short story writing prize up for grabs. This year's Sunday Star-Times short story award's secondary schools category has a theme for the first time: the effect of climate change on the environment and how the world may look different in the future. Jennifer Liu, winner of the last secondary schools writer category, was asked to think about for this year's category. Students read a highly acclaimed eco-horror about the dangers of toxic pesticides in class, and Jennifer Liu won the 2022 competition with her short story The Lotus. The competition has inspired prize-winning novels and short stories by Kirsten McDougall, Wellington author and 2020 winner of short story competition, as well as the plot of a plot set “sometime in the near future” in Wellington that follows New Zealand being changed from the inside by “wealthugees” and people sheltering in Aotearoa from their own climate-change-ravaged homelands. Author Michael McDougall believes that art can provide a mirror on the world to provide solutions for climate change and encourage young writers to take meaningful action.
Published : 2 years ago by Sapeer Mayron in Environment
It’s some time in the distant future, and time has run out. Earth’s leaders failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prevent global warming by 1.5 degrees, and every single nation on the planet can feel the impact.
Perhaps. Or perhaps not. That’s what rangatahi have been asked to think about for this year’s Sunday Star-Times short story award’s secondary schools category.
Sponsored by the Milford Foundation with a prize of $1500, the category has a theme for the first time: the effect of climate change on the environment and how the world may look different in the future - particularly for the young writers’ generation.
“It is such a significant part of our lives right now,” says winner of the last secondary schools writer category, 17-year-old Jennifer Liu.
Climate change comes up “at least twice a week” in conversations between friends, and in all kinds of classes - be it English, science or economics, she says.
In one class this year, students read Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin (translated), a highly acclaimed eco-horror about the dangers of toxic pesticides.
“I think reading it in class is actually quite interesting because we’re able to have so much discussion … and it does get quite depressing sometimes.
“Our teacher sometimes ends the class with ‘well, that was depressing’, but we always try and laugh or see the silver lining in it, I think.”
Liu won the 2022 competition with her short story The Lotus. Winning has since spurred her on to write at least once a day, and lately she’s in her “poetry era”.
“Spending this year finding my style and voice in my writing has been, I would say, an outcome of the competition last year.
“I honestly wasn’t expecting anything and the outcome was really good and it did encourage me a lot.”
Fiction focused on the burning questions of our climate’s future has been dubbed “cli-fi”, and has inspired prize-winning novels and short stories.
She’s a Killer (2021), a novel by Kirsten McDougall, Wellington author and 2020 winner of the short story competition, grapples with it too.
Set “sometime in the near future” in Wellington, the plot follows New Zealand being changed from the inside by “wealthugees” - people sheltering in Aotearoa from their own climate-change-ravaged homelands.
McDougall says it’s worth exploring not only the physical impacts of climate change, but the psychological demands it places on humanity.
“How do we shift away from ‘head in the sand’ to actually starting to look at what change might look like?
“I think that’s what’s quite exciting about climate change [as a theme], is it’s actually not just about terrible weather, or patterns of flooding and ice melting. It’s about human psychology, and how we see ourselves as a part of the living organism of the planet and all the creatures and plants and the soil and the sea and everything.
“I think for so long we’ve seen ourselves as being above all of that. If there’s one thing that really catastrophic weather shows you is that no, you’re at the mercy of it, you’re a part of it.”
She encourages rangatahi not to look too far away or ahead when they imagine what to write about.
Catastrophic flooding in Auckland and on the East Coast during Cyclone Gabrielle were enough to push many to ask whether they’re safe, and how long before the next major weather event.
“I think there’s a background anxiety that we live in, so art can be a really useful place to play in, and to explore ideas in. You don’t need to provide the solutions, but what art can do is put a mirror on the world.”
Wellington English teacher Tali Josephs encourages her students to ‘write what they know’ - and more often than not, they are picking climate change.
“I think writing about it enables them to articulate their fears and anxieties and then use this to move forward in a meaningful way and take action - which we know our youth excel at.”
In the last four years she’s taught one particular assignment for Year 13s, writing about dystopian societies or arguing that our own society is dystopian. Climate change always come up.
“We discuss dystopian texts as warnings to the reader about their own society, and a world impacted by climate change is a dystopia that they can best make sense of,” she says.
“I've had students also write horror genre stories centred on climate change, which again really illuminates their feelings on the issue.
“To be honest, I think that Gen Z are 'climate change natives' in the same way that they are 'digital natives' in a lot of ways. They can't imagine their world without an awareness, and latent fear, of climate change. They can't pinpoint it to a pivotal event; it's just an underpinning understanding and reality of their everyday lives.
“Despite this, they are impressively and inspiringly optimistic. They never fail to amaze me with their passion, resilience and belief in their own ability to effect change.”
Judging this year’s category is previous open category winner Bernard Steeds, who won in not only 2022’s competition but also 1998’s.
He is excited to see how young writers tackle the topic in fiction.
New Zealand’s own experiences of climate change have had immense human impact, Steeds said.
“I think anything can be tackled in fiction if you find a personal or social angle on it. How are people affected or how might they navigate these circumstances or how are they relating to the world around them?”
Asked what he’ll be looking for in the winning entry, Steeds has just one criteria: be yourself.
“If you’re writing the thing you really wanted to write and if you’re writing for your own purpose, then it’s going to have value irrespective of what someone else thinks of it,” he says.
“To me that’s a much more important way of looking at a piece of writing than how it might be judged by someone else.
“It’s the same as if you’re speaking to someone and they’re trying to moderate what they’re saying in order to please the audience, that will come across differently than if they’re being fully themselves.
“So what I’d encourage is young writers to be fully themselves and say whatever they want to say. These are big topics, so I’m excited to see what perspectives they’ve got to offer.”
Entries close November 12, 2023 at 11.45pm. Winners will be announced in December, and a selection of the winning entries will be published in the Sunday Star-Times, and on Stuff.co.nz. The terms and conditions are here. The entry form is here.