A Sámi woman studying Alaska fish populations sees our past and future through their present signs of stress and her ancestral knowledge. A teenager faces a permanent drought in Australia and her own sexual desire. An unemployed man in Wisconsin marvels as a motley parade of animals makes his trailer their portal to a world untrammeled by humans. Featuring short fiction from authors around the globe, Fire & Water: Stories from the Anthropocene takes readers on a rare journey through the physical and emotional landscape of the climate crisis—not in the future, but today. By turns frightening, confusing, and even amusing, these stories remind us how complex, and beautiful, it is to be human in these unprecedented times.

Fire & Water: Stories from the Anthropocene made the 35 Impressive Indie Books of 2021 list published by Independent Book Review. Ecolit calls Fire & Water a new environmental book of note. Nicole Walker names Fire & Water as one of the best books that makes science a story.

Contributors:

Tomas Baiza, J. D. Evans, Mary Fifield, Bishop Garrison, JoeAnn Hart, Anthony S. James, Stefan Kiesbye, Jack Kirne, Carlos Labbé, Shaun Levin, Jessica Meeker, Jennifer Morales, Etan Nechin, Vivian Faith Prescott, Kristin Thiel, Jan Underwood, Tara Williams

Author Bios

Mary Fifield, co-editor and contributor, has published fiction in J Journal, Midway Journal, The Write Launch, and Fiction Southeast, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Having lived in Ecuador and Portland, Oregon, she is now in San Diego working on a darkly comic, deadly serious, cautiously hopeful novel about an unlikely band of champions attempting to reverse climate chaos. Find out more at earthinhere.com.

Kristin Thiel, co-editor and contributor, is based in Portland, Oregon, and she has been a professional in the world of words for nearly twenty years. She has written nonfiction titles for young people and edited for individuals (like Terah Shelton Harris), publishing houses (such as Simon & Schuster, Coffee House Press, and Outskirts Press), and organizations (including United Nations, Lewis & Clark College, and Portland State University).