Event
THE WRITER IN RELATION TO SCIENCE
Sam Apple, Marcella Durand, Eli Kintisch, and Michelle Taransky; Creative Writing Program
What is the role of the writer with respect to science? Can writers, as scientific outsiders, provide meaningful critiques of the scientific process? Can writers act as scientific insiders, using the scientific method to shape their practices? Sam Apple, Marcella Durand, Eli Kintisch, and Michelle Taransky will discuss.
SAM APPLE is the author of Schlepping Through the Alps, American Parent, and The Saddest Toilet in the World. A graduate of the Columbia University MFA program, Apple has written for The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Wired, The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times Magazine, The MIT Technology Review, and McSweeney's, among many other publications. Schlepping Through the Alps was a finalist for the PEN America Award for a first work of nonfiction. Apple is currently writing a book about the German scientist Otto Warburg.
As a correspondent for Science magazine, ELI KINTISCH covers climate change and sustainability, with a focus on the Arctic and oceans. In 2015, an article he wrote on how the thawing Arctic may impact global weather was included in the annual Best American Science and Nature Writing anthology. His work has also been published in other magazines including New Scientist, National Geographic, Slate, Nautilus and Hakai. Hack the Planet, a nonfiction book Kintisch published in 2010, revealed why respected scientists are exploring the frightening world of geoengineering the climate directly to reverse climate change. As part of a Knight fellowship at MIT in 2011, he created a juried art exhibition to encourage climate-art partnerships and create public art around climate change. In partnership with the Rhode Island School of Design the following year, he designed a prototype app that allows users to visualize local future sea level rise using three-dimensional augmented reality.
MICHELLE TARANSKY is the author of Sorry Was In the Woods (Omnidawn Publishing) and Barn Burned, Then (Omnidawn Publishing), selected by Marjorie Welish for the 2008 Omnidawn Poetry Prize. Taransky is on the faculty of the critical writing department at The University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches writing and was recently awarded the Beltran Family Award for Innovative Teaching & Mentoring. She is also reviews editor of Jacket2.
MARCELLA DURAND’s books include Deep Eco Pre, a collaboration with Tina Darragh (Little Red Leaves, 2009); AREA (Belladonna, 2008); and Traffic & Weather, a site-specific poem written during a residency at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in downtown Manhattan (Futurepoem, 2008). Her poetry and essays on the intersections of poetry and ecology have appeared in the (eco(lang)(uage (reader), Ecopoetics, Chain, Conjunctions, NYFA Current, HOW(2), Critiphoria, and other journals. She is currently working on a collection of alexandrines titled Rays of the Shadow.