Mashing It Up: Creative Writing Pedagogy and the Affective Possibilities of Genre Meeting Climate Fiction

This article explores how pedagogy focused on affective possibilities of narrative genres can suggest new directions for climate fiction, potentially challenging the dystopian dominance in the climate crisis imaginary. We analyse a corpus of work produced by first year creative writing students. The students were given the task of “mashing” climate fiction with another genre (romance, horror, crime or any other genre of their choice) and asked to reflect on how this changed the emotional affect and tone of their narrative. Many students were still drawn to dystopian visions, reflecting how climate fiction has become entangled with this particular mode of storytelling, but the focus on reader affect resulted in the students adding layers of hope and agency. Many made use of the possibilities offered by genre: the whimsical allegory of fantasy, the critical thinking of realism, the active fear of horror and the comic potential of satire. By giving students the freedom to embed climate change into their preferred genre, and by asking them to consider the affective consequences of their choices, we offer challenges to the dominance of dystopian climate fiction, suggesting a different path to narratively engage with the climate crisis without descending into hopelessness.