"Not Waving but Drowning" : Speculative Fiction & Embodied Drought

There's no doubt that water, and its absence, is an issue deeply stitched into the fabric and conflicts of the American West – and when you start looking into a future where megadroughts are the norm, it gets spooky quick. It's easy to get lost in the science and projections around climate change – so, how can fiction and art help us to better imagine a landscape and way of life drastically different from our present? How can stories create empathy and invoke action in the present? In this episode, Hannah shares an excerpt from her senior thesis The Space is Not Empty, exploring how a West without water would feel, be experienced by a woman named Theresa – by a body, by somebody with memories and family and dreams and sorrows. When a change is so all-encompassing, sometimes it's all we can talk about.