In the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, novelist Stephen Markley joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss his novel The Deluge, which predicts and depicts the impact of climate change over the next couple of decades. Markley talks about researching and portraying the scale of catastrophic climate events, the role of the markets and other financial considerations in pushing world leaders to take the issue seriously, and which character in his novel was previously Kamala Harris. Markely also reflects on how in revision, he repeatedly had to scale up his fictional disasters to keep them ahead of actual events, the uncanny experience of forecasting disasters like Helene, and the movement leaders—including Bill McKibben, Al Gore, and James Hansen—he felt compelled to include in his novel. Markley reads from The Deluge.
Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/
This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf and Cheni Thein.
Stephen Markley
The Deluge
Ohio
Only Murders in the Building
Others:
Matthew Salesses on the Possibilities of Climate Fiction | Literary Hub
1984 by George Orwell
Ali Zaidi
Weather Underground
Climate Defiance
The End of Nature by Bill McKibben
The Stand by Stephen King
The Inflation Reduction Act
The Green New Deal
“Helene, Milton losses expected to surpass ‘truly historic’ $50 billion each” - CBS News
“Beyond Helene: Hurricane death toll tops 300 lives, with month left in season” - USA Today
Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 4 Episode 15: Workshop Politics: Matthew Salesses on Centering the Marginalized Writer
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