Speaker: Coryna Ogunseitan
How can we explore our feelings about climate change through creative writing?
As environmental crisis escalates, creative writers across genres are increasingly centering feelings related to climate change in their work. Reading this literature can help us access our feelings of grief or anxiety related to the climate crisis, and can illuminate the ways in which poets guide the way for us to reshape our relationship with the natural world to be one of mutual reciprocity rather than exploitation. This talk will involve close reading and discussion of poetry to encourage students to reimagine their relationships with the changing environment. Students will also be encouraged to produce their own writing about someplace they feel connected to in the natural world.
About the Speaker
Coryna (they/them and she/her) is a second year doctoral student in Medical Anthropology researching the impacts of climate change on mental health, and how terms like climate anxiety and climate grief are reshaping clinical and spiritual healing spaces. She is from California and holds a BA in Literature from Yale and an MSW from Berkeley. When not working, Coryna can be found practicing yoga, reading, hiking, and binging reality TV.
Suggested Audiences
Age: 9th - 12th grade and community college
Preparation: There is no preparation necessary.
Courses: ELA/Literature classes, Environmental Science