Americans in the Anthropocene: my first and so far only foray into writing about nonfiction. The editors made me change the title — I still think “Americans in the Anthropocene” is the one. A discussion of how we need both passionate commitment and an open spirit to survive in the era of climate chaos.

This was the beginning of my engagement with planetary thinking, as opposed to global thinking, in Gayatri Spivak’s important distinction — not taking on a frontal engagement with totalizing systems like capitalism and the UN, but thinking of literature as a part of a dynamic, living and vulnerable planetary community, riven by difference and open to change.