[Susan Kaye Quinn]

Hey everyone! Exciting to see this roll out!

My background is in science and engineering (a range of degrees including environmental engineering, PhD studying aerosol formation and climate change, post-doc at NCAR, National Center for Atmospheric Research), but I’ve since become a speculative fiction author: novels, short stories, most recently screenwriting.

I’ve been a full-time writer for a dozen years, but for the last five, I’ve been exploring different ways to tell story — eschewing the Hero’s Journey, shifting the narrative from “extreme individualism” to collaboration, developing a “New Mythos” (h/t PJ Manney) to counter the destructive old mythos that shape our unsustainable reality.

Since 2020, I’ve focused on near-future climate storytelling, trying to shine a light on the path forward, imagineering a way out of the polycrisis. I’ve published novels and short stories to that effect (plus a recent non-fiction piece in DreamForge magazine about hopepunk). My current project is a TV pilot about a group of climate activists in a near-future (2041) Houston, trying to heal the world while healing the quiet catastrophes of their personal lives.

One of my deep wells of hope — the things that keep me going — is seeing initiatives like this popping up, all over, in a range of forms. So many of us are not willing to sit around, waiting for the apocalypse to wipe the slate clean, before we find ways to fix the world. We’re doing our part, with our skills, in our places, to rewrite the future into one we want to live in.

I’m excited to be in this generative space with all of you.