Posts Tagged ‘fiction’
Climate action novel published
“Engrossing, insightful, and entirely credible.” —Markku Kulmala University of Helsinki Academy Professor and atmospheric scientist “Frighteningly believable.” —Kati Halonen, poet At NeuWrite Nordic we’ve workshopped several sections of a novel about climate change, in which dramatic scenes of destruction and chaos have stripped away the polite politicking of national leaders and climate scientists…
Read More“Hair-Power Performativity” published
An illustration called “Cut It Out” by the Italian artist Marco Melgrati in support of Iranian women’s protest (center image, above) was the inspiration for a draft text we workshopped at NeuWrite Nordic last autumn. The text, a collaborative hybrid of social-science and storytelling titled “Hair-Power Performativity,” was published this week in the Barcelona-based journal…
Read MoreFact vs. fantasy—science writing meets science fiction
For communicating factual science, we’ve talked about using techniques from fiction. And we’ve workshopped fiction that’s intended to communicate about factual science. But is there a difference, actually, between writing nonfiction and fiction, and if so, what is it? And for that matter, is fiction really even fictional? We were surprised what some scientist-writers had…
Read MoreNew film about reverse aging hits theaters
We’re thrilled that the new film Palimpsest, aspects of which were workshopped at NeuWrite Nordic, hits theaters in Helsinki this Friday, 12 April. A special screening with English subtitles will be held in Punavuori on Monday, 22 April, at 17:00. Screenwriter and filmmaker Hanna Västinsalo, a NeuWrite Nordic adviser and regular participant, has a PhD…
Read MoreWould you want to live longer but get younger?
We had a fun challenge this month from Hanna Västinsalo, our celebrity filmmaker, who leverages her PhD in genetics to entertain audiences with unexpected science stories with a human perspective. We workshopped Hanna’s marketing strategy for her powerful new science-fiction film depicting the psychological experience of reverse aging, Palimpsest. To help with that task, we…
Read MoreGoing deep—getting the writer and reader immersed
What happens when, as we research and write, we take a really deep dive—especially into subject matter that might be outside our expertise, or into a complicated real-world situation, or even into the minds of the people we’re writing about? What ethical problems arise for us as writers? What writing techniques can we use? How…
Read MoreLiterary science writing wins award
Exciting news for all of us working in the mysterious creative space between the literary arts and science: yesterday, the debut novel Beasts of the Sea (Fin. Elolliset) by Iida Turpeinen won the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize. The novel has also been nominated for Finland’s most prestigious literary award, the Finlandia Prize (which was won…
Read MoreThe shocking truth about scientific utopias
Scientists hate science. Or so it seemed when we read the judges’ comments and the winning stories in the EU-LIFE/Nature essay competition, which had been intended to encourage scientists to write speculative fiction about their ideal future—a scientific utopia. When the submissions flooded in, the judges were alarmed by what they received: What we [had]…
Read More“LGBTIQ+N” sci-fi short story published
Speculative fiction penned by scientists is rare, but perhaps it shouldn’t be. Recently we workshopped an unusual form of scientific commentary: a one-page sci-fi tale by microbiologist and NeuWrite Nordic advisory board member Howy Jacobs of Tampere University (pictured) that confronted the frightening ethical and political implications of human genetic engineering. This month, Jacobs’ story…
Read MoreUsing dramatic stories to teach
How to get readers interested in the nuances of complex debates over climate policy? Yawn. Unless, maybe, you start your story like this: A typhoon has hit Manila during a UN climate summit, and world leaders are stuck in the basement of a Manila hotel. The American president has a psychological meltdown after a tree…
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