Short Stories of Apocalypse

Lydia Millet is an American novelist and conservationist. She is the author of numerous books including A Children’s Bible; Love in Infant Monkeys, a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize; and My Happy Life, winner of the 2003 PEN Center USA Award for Fiction. Among her other awards and honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Award for Merit for the Short Story. She lives in the desert outside Tucson, Arizona, with her two children and works for the Center for Biological Diversity.

Sjón is an Icelandic poet and author whose novels have been published in over thirty-five languages. He is the author of The Blue Fox, winner of the Nordic Council’s Literary Prize; From the Mouth of the Whale, shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize; Moonstone—The Boy Who Never Was, winner of the Icelandic Literary Prize; and CoDex 1962, published by MCD Books in the US. In 2001 he was nominated for an Oscar for his lyrics in the film Dancer in the Dark.

Paul Kingsnorth is a writer living in rural Ireland. In 2009, he created and launched Dark Mountain Project, a writers’ and artists’ movement designed to question the stories our culture is telling itself in a time of ecological and social unraveling. Paul has won various prizes for his poetry, including the 2012 Wenlock Prize. His first novel, The Wake, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Gordon Burn Prize and the Bookseller Book of the Year Award. Paul’s second novel, Beast, was shortlisted for the Encore Award for the best second novel. The third, and final, installment in this trilogy, Alexandria, is forthcoming. Paul published his first collection of essays, Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist, in 2017, and his most recent nonfiction book, Savage Gods, was released in 2019.

Ben Okri is a Nigerian poet, novelist, and playwright. His many books and poetry collections include: Prayer for the Living, The Freedom Artist, and Rise Like Lions: Poetry for the Many. His novel The Famished Road was the recipient of the Booker Prize for Fiction.

Alexis Wright is a member of the Waanyi people from the highlands of the southern Gulf of Carpentaria in Australia. She is the author of the novels The Swan Book and Carpentaria, winner of the Miles Franklin Award, Australia’s most prestigious literary prize. Wright has published three works of nonfiction: Take Power, Grog War, and Tracker, a collective memoir of Aboriginal leader Tracker Tilmouth and winner of the Stella Prize. Her most recent book is Praiseworthy. In 2017 she was named the Boisbouvier Chair in Australian Literature at the University of Melbourne.