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Radically Reimagining Our Future Through Climate Fiction
Why you can trust us
When we want to know what’s happening in the world, we turn to journalism. When we want to escape from reality, we turn to fiction. But both are forms of storytelling. And both are necessary for the critical work of bringing about climate solutions.
“I believe it’s helpful to have depictions of the world we want,” says Tory Stephens, climate fiction creative manager at Grist. “We’re trying to show that another world is possible.”
Stephens leads an annual writing contest called “Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors.” Now in its fourth year, the contest seeks to prompt reflection and action on climate change. Stephens says the goal of the initiative is, in part, “advocating and helping people realize their visions and dreams through writing.”
The exercise is designed to be beneficial for both the writers and the readers. Climate fiction is a collective endeavor. We can’t imagine a better world alone, nor can we build one.
Stephens says fiction helps get us out of the mental ruts we often find ourselves in amid the humdrum of our daily grind and the overwhelm of the climate crisis. Climate fiction can prompt rich discussions through enlightening questions like “What does hope look like?” or “What does a decolonized future look like?” And while journalism can ask these questions, fiction actually builds out these worlds to show them in all their glorious detail.
The news today doesn’t always zoom out far enough to show the extractive nature of our current reality and all those it harms. Most news stories show a mainstream perspective that too often centers a white, straight, male view of the world. It misses entirely the lived experience of far too many people and communities.
Stephens points out that the very real knowledge held by folks who have been pushed to the margins isn’t being depicted in news stories. And it’s certainly not showing up on the front page of mainstream western media outlets. And the efforts to change those norms are too often framed as fringe or frivolous or unrealistic.
But who gets to choose what’s realistic? Isn’t reality what we collectively make it? Is the status quo something we really want to bring into the future?
In the same way that historical fiction can give us a new understanding of past events and shift our perspective, climate fiction can do the same for possible futures.
The writers of the stories in Grist’s fiction collections are in the business of radical reimagining. “We’re trying to show a world of abundance, where the characters are the folks that have been marginalized,” Stephens says. “Those folks are depicted in hero terms, owning the world, and bringing forth a world that others want to live by.”
Grist’s writing competition calls for people who are on the front lines all over the world to share their vision of the world from where they sit (and stand and rise up).
“That’s not going to look the same if you ask someone from India, or even another part of India, right? There’s just so many different perspectives on what a clean, green, and just world looks like,” Stephens says. He believes exposure to novel and vastly different ideas of beautiful, rich worlds has serious value. “And right now, there’s not enough of that, in my opinion, going on.”
Stephens says he wants to be clear that he thinks dystopian stories also serve a great purpose to society. “They show the world that we don’t want to live in, and I think that’s something we need,” he says, “but we feel like there’s not enough hopeful stories out there.”
“There’s a narrative arc that needs to change in the United States,” Stephens says. We need to move from an understanding of “‘we can’t get out of this crisis’ to ‘we can get out of this crisis.’”
That’s where hopeful climate fiction comes in. Grist has received more than 3,000 entries to its writing competition in its first three years. And entries just opened for the 2025 edition of Imagine 2200.
Why the year 2200? It may seem oddly specific, and also too far ahead to be able to grasp. But that’s exactly why Grist chose that year—to help us break free of the limits of our collective imagination. We need to overcome the myopic perspectives that Western society is so mired in. Stephens points to the fact that U.S. politicians can’t pass a budget for six months. Long-term planning has to go beyond four-year terms and five-year plans.
As a counterweight, Grist aimed to shift away from Western timelines altogether. In deciding on a timeline, editors looked to Indigenous frameworks for being good stewards of the Earth, not just for our own sake, or for individual outcomes, but for seven or eight generations of future ancestors.
“I think there’s deep wisdom in looking internally for future societies and planning that far ahead,” Stephens says. “You can dream big, and no one can tell you that’s not going to be achieved by that time, because we all just don’t know.”
These stories, then, are like lenses to broaden our horizons. They are meant to tease our imaginations and prompt us all to dream bigger and more boldly.
Stephens compares dreams to seeds—each one with the potential to grow into something real. More justice. Cleaner technologies. The centering of frontline communities. “The thing I like about these stories—and the reason I advocate for climate storytelling and climate fiction—is I think we need a million more flowers to bloom, or stories to bloom.”
Stephens readily admits there are already some climate outcomes baked into whatever narrative we write from here; they are an inevitable part of the reality that we’re going to be living in. “But it doesn’t have to end in the apocalypse,” Stephens says. “It can end with us having a better life.”
Explore stories from this year’s contest below:
More Than a Marble
Propelled by a discerning non-verbal child, a craft gets elevated to an act of devotion.
By Rae Mariz
Rewilding a Grieving Heart
A father copes with the loss of his daughter by giving back to nature, as she had wanted.
By Andrew Kenneson
Rooted in the Diaspora
Evolving technology and place-based knowledge help a family connect with joy while far from home and one another.
By Sanjana Sekhar
The Water Came Early
Grappling with the fantasy and memory of flooding on California’s last remaining almond farm.
By Zoe Young
For the Good of the Hive
A bee caretaker learns just how much humans can gain from tuning in to nature’s cues.
By Jamie Liu
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Breanna Draxler
is a senior editor at YES!, where she leads coverage of climate and environmental justice, and Native rights. She has nearly a decade of experience editing, reporting, and writing for national magazines including National Geographic online and Grist, among others. She collaborated on a climate action guide for Audubon Magazine that won a National Magazine Award in 2020. She recently served as a board member for the Society of Environmental Journalists and the Northwest Science Writers Association. She has a master’s degree in environmental journalism from the University of Colorado Boulder. Breanna is based out of the traditional territories of the Coast Salish people, but has worked in newsrooms on both coasts and in between. She previously held staff positions at bioGraphic, Popular Science, and Discover Magazine.
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