Among a total of 52 works, this issue of KYSO Flash offers 14 on the theme of climate change, including winners and finalists from our “One Life, One Earth” writing competition launched last November. They range from nonfiction to poetry to “cli-fi” (a term which refers to climate fiction and originated with climate and literary activist Dan Bloom*.)

As co-editors Jack Cooper and Clare MacQueen wrote last fall:

[We] are deeply concerned about climate change and its threat to life on Earth. The people of Senegal no longer have enough water to grow food for their families and are among the first climate refugees. The oceans are now so warm that our coral reefs are bleaching, decimating the populations of fish and other sea-life that spawn there. North American forest species are dying in their southern range due to heat and lack of rain. The ice caps are melting, methane gas is streaming from the tundra, and entire islands in the Pacific are disappearing underwater. Even the Baltimore oriole can no longer survive in Baltimore.

It’s clear that we must move with urgency if any hope prevails to stop the environmental crises we face from over-consumption, habitat destruction, and continued reliance on fossil fuels. Yes, we can conserve, boycott, plant, engineer, donate, march, and vote. We can also sing, paint, dance, and write. If we don’t succeed in stopping the climate avalanche entirely, perhaps our music will make the snow melt more slowly. [“The snow is melting into music,” from John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir (1938, page 107).]

Thus, we offer a writing competition whose theme is climate change, “One Life, One Earth,” in recognition of the written word’s unique role in celebrating and nourishing our little blue planet. We want to know what cries out inside of you, our artists, our most sensitive chroniclers of civilization and wilderness, as this crisis looms. The best, original works of 1,000 words or fewer...will win cash prizes, plus publication online and in print....

We are grateful to everyone who took up the challenge. Your efforts, at turns courageous and insightful, prescient and moving, confirm our oneness with the earth’s own creative force. We believe they honor our precious planet and will heal our severed bonds. Thank you so much for allowing us the privilege of considering your work.

Winning Entries:

• First Place: $300
  Ersatz Café’s Post-Climate-Change Impact Menu
  Flash/Climate Fiction [aka “cli-fi”*]
  By Ashley Shelby
  
  
• Second Place: $200
  Gaia
  Tanka Tale
  By Claire Everett
  
  
• Third Place: $100
  Survival
  Haiga: Fabric Art + Tanka Sequence
  By Suzanne Starjash and David C. Rice
  
  

Finalists (alphabetical order by author):

• But Now We Are Many
  Tanka Prose
  By Jenny Angyal
  
  
• The Melting Snows
  Lineated Poem: Villanelle
  By Chris Cole
  
  
• Hearts of Oak
  Tanka Tale
  By Claire Everett
  
  
• Primordial
  Lineated Poem
  By Peter Galle
  
  

(Please note that all seven of the works listed above have also been awarded publication in our annual print anthology scheduled for release in December.)

The following seven works round out our selection of climate-change literature in KF-7:

• No Room to Rage
  Lineated Poem (reprinted)
  By Jack Cooper
  
  
• Noam Poem
  Lineated Poem (reprinted)
  By Jack Cooper
  
  
• Overwhelmed: Waking Up to the Mother of All Problems
  Essay
  By Jack Cooper
  
  
• The World Is Bigger
  Micro-Fiction
  By Kika Dorsey
  
  
• The Republican Convention: 2016
  Lineated Poem
  By Dan Gilmore
  
  
• The Boy
  Tanka Prose
  By Bill Gottlieb
  
  
• Believe Only in the Weather
  Memoir
  By Arya F. Jenkins
  
  

* For more information about Dan Bloom and climate-change literature, see:

• Cli-Fi: A New Genre Takes Flight, an interview of Bloom by author and editor Tara Masih, in “GrubWrites” at www.grubstreet.org
  
  
• The Cli-Fi Report, Bloom’s website
  
  
• “Cli-Fi” May Be No Stranger Than Reality, an article by Bloom in IPS:Inter Press Service (4 April 2014)