Abstract: The term “cli-fi” — short for “climate fiction,” and referring today to fiction that depicts a changed or changing climate — has been in use since at least 2008, but as the perception of climate change has shifted from being a problem of the future to one unfolding with immediacy and urgency in our own local contexts, the genre has shifted from a mode of science fiction to a more heterogeneous and unpredictable. Recent works of climate fiction are both closer in resemblance to the world of our everyday lives, and more varied in the way in which they depict the difficulties of adapting to environmental shifts. I will discuss these trends in relation to my own climate novel, Something New Under the Sun, as we think through the stakes of writing fiction about climate change and the opportunities it may offer.

Bio: Alexandra Kleeman is the author of the novel Something New Under the Sun, a New York Times Notable Book of 2021, as well as the short story collection Intimations and the novel You Too Can Have A Body Like Mine. Her work deals in issues related to climate catastrophe, embodiment, and late-capitalist realism. Her novel-in-progress, comprising five novellas set on different islands, traces the rise and fall of systems of monetization and exchange. The recipient of the Rome Prize, Berlin Prize, and Bard Fiction Prize, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction in 2022.

Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Zoetrope, Conjunctions, and Guernica, among others, and other writing has appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, VOGUE, Tin House, n+1, and The Guardian. She has received fellowships and support from Bread Loaf, MacDowell, Djerassi, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Bergman Estate. A Contributing Writer at the New York Times Magazine, she writes essays and long-form profiles about cultural figures and lives in Ithaca and Colorado.

This event is presented as part of the 2026 Perspectives on the Climate Change Challenge Seminar Series:

• Most Mondays, Spring Semester 2026, 2:55-4:10 p.m.
• 155 Olin Hall & Zoom

This university-wide seminar series is open to the public (via Zoom), and provides important views on the critical issue of climate change, drawing from many perspectives and disciplines. Experts from Cornell University and beyond present an overview of the science of climate change and climate change models, the implications for agriculture, ecosystems, and food systems, and provide important economic, ethical, and policy insights on the issue. The seminar is being organized and sponsored by the Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering and Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability.