I’m beyond excited to announce the official launch of Fix’s writing contest, Imagine 2200: Climate fiction for future ancestors. After a year few of us could have imagined (not to mention a tumultuous start to 2021), my team at Fix is looking, optimistically, to the future. And we hope you’ll help us spread the word about this contest far and wide!
I’d like to share a quick note about how this project came to be. In the spring of 2020, just after the pandemic had hit the United States, Fix convened (virtually) a group of New England Fixers to foretell the next 180 years for their region. They visualized a complete societal transformation and a path to a clean, green, and just future: A dissolution of political parties and borders. Reparations. The return of land to Indigenous and Black stewardship. Restorative justice replacing prisons. Food sovereignty triumphing over monoculture farming. An economy built on ecological restoration, mutual aid, and care work. Out of their visions grew the idea to launch a climate-fiction initiative at Fix.
Check out our media kit (below) for graphics and sample social copy to spread the word about this new project.
Imagine 2200 draws inspiration from Afrofuturism, as well as Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, disabled, feminist, and queer futures. The contest is also grounded in hopepunk and solarpunk — literary genres that uplift equitable climate solutions and continued service to one’s community, even in the face of despair.
In the contest’s inaugural year, we’re calling for short stories that envision the next 180 years of equitable climate progress. What will the world look like in the year 2200 — or anywhere between then and now? Submissions open today (January 12) and close on April 12. Stories will be judged by a board of literary experts including authors Adrienne Maree Brown, Morgan Jerkins, and Kiese Laymon. The first, second, and third-place winners will be awarded $3,000, $2,000, and $1,000 respectively, and nine additional finalists will each receive a $300 honorarium. Winners and finalists will be published in a digital collection on the Fix website and will be celebrated in a public-facing virtual event.
We hope you’ll help us get this opportunity out in front of the world. Together, we can fix the future with fiction. Join this creative uprising of imagination. In your story lies our collective liberation.
Imagine 2200 Project Director & New England Network Weaver, Fix
Stay in touch
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(Top photo: Carolina RodrÃguez Fuenmayor)
Grist is an independent, nonprofit media outlet covering the climate crisis and the many facets of life it touches. Our award-winning journalism elevates solutions, exposes inequity, and gives our readers the context, knowledge, and tools to make a difference.
Fix is Grist’s solutions lab. We combine solutions-oriented storytelling with gatherings that bring together a growing community of Fixers to create a planet that doesn’t burn and a future that doesn’t suck.