An invitation to collaborate on a book review of Environmental Futures: An International Literary Anthology

For several months now, there has been a book sitting on my desk waiting to be read. It is an international environmental literary anthology filled with different forms of creative writing from all over the world. I agreed to review the collection for the academic journal cultural geographies. I have yet to read it. Meanwhile, I have been dreaming up ways of making LAX LAB 2.0 more collaborative, beyond the usual book club activities. You see where I am going with this?

I would like to invite you to review this book together with me. I am not entirely sure how this will work but we will figure it out together, exploring new ways of co-creating knowledge.

The book in question is Environmental Futures: An International Literary Anthology, edited by Caren Irr and published by Brandeis University Press in 2024.

Environmental Futures takes a global perspective and decolonial approach, highlighting local and Indigenous writers from Anglophone Africa, South Asia, India, China, South America, the peripheries of Europe, and BIPoC North America. This anthology brings together short stories, poetry, drama, and literary non-fiction, all with environmental themes.

The collection “explores resistance to the oil economy, the impact of storms and natural disasters, extinction, and relations between humans and animals, among other themes”. Edited by Caren Irr, the book is organised geographically into five sections: Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America. The writings in these sections have been selected by Kurt Cavender, Roberto Forns-Broggi, Cajetan Iheka, Upamanyu (Pablo) Mukherjee, Irina Sadovina, and Shaobo Xie.

Please join me in reading, discussing, and crafting a co-authored review of this exciting book. By participating, you will be included as a co-author in the published review in cultural geographies.

Reading diversely and globally is a priority of LAX LAB 2.0 and I hope this book will be an excellent way to explore climate and environmental literature beyond dominant narratives.

If you would like to join this collective review experiment, please email me to express your interest and we will go from there.