The conversation you’re about to hear, “The Positive Twist,” was held between Allison Cobb, Sarah Riggs and Jérémy Robert. Cobb starts by reading the preface to Plastic: An Autobiography, the book she published with Nightboat Books in 2021, where she describes plastic as the epitome of the Anthropocene, and its damages on a personal and global level. She elaborates on her relationship with genres and her environmental engagement. She talks about the togetherness of lived experiences when she documented her failure to communicate with the inhabitants Mossville, Louisiana, once dubbed “the most toxic town” in the United States. She walks us through the three stages of apology, the creative meanderings of fiction and imagination, as well as the joyous and sustainable strength that can stem from our understanding of the plastic tragedy, and how literature, in its own way, can fend off resentment and help locate the strength to take action.
