Seeking writers to author essays for Reproduction in the Age of Extinction (working title), an online series to be published throughout 2022.
Holders of power and wealth, especially in the global North, continually fail to meaningfully address the ongoing climate and ecological crises.
On account of this, children born today are expected to face even more rapidly melting ice caps, rising sea levels, mass instability, forced migration, and ecological collapse.
Considering such a trajectory, how can and do potential parents make the decision to have children or not?
What does it feel like to be a child born into these converging crises of rapid global heating and loss of the living world? Will today’s children be angry at their parents for bringing them into such a situation? Will they still find joy in life?
Are you already a parent, asking yourself these questions and perhaps also discussing them, age-appropriately, with your child(ren)?
Or perhaps you would like to become a parent, and are pondering the ethical aspects of welcoming new life into this world?
Maybe you are a birth striker, voluntarily childless until measures are taken to stop ecocide and avert climate disaster?
Perhaps you are a marginalized member of society, or part of an endangered culture wondering about the survival of your language(s) and way of life?
The essay series aims to create space and opportunity for writers and readers alike to sit with such complex questions and feelings. To give room for uncertainty. To extend love and care during a difficult era.
The series is deeply about responding to climate and ecological crisis, especially in terms of psychological, emotional, and spiritual wellness.
Through the act of writing and sharing, the series hopes to increase awareness of these crises faced by life on Earth. It also may (or then again might not) explore possible paths forward.
Central values for the essay series are intersectional feminism, nonoppression, decolonization, and deep ecology.
Proposals are welcome from writers of diverse genders, linguistic, cultural, and other minorities, and a varied age group. Indigenous writers and writers from the Arctic and global South are especially welcome.
In your proposal, please describe the general perspective from which you anticipate writing and approaching the topic (this may very likely change and develop during your writing process), and tell about your motivation for forming a part of the essay series.
Please also indicate which language you intend to write in. If in a language other than English, please indicate if your essay may be translated and published in English, in addition to the original language. In this case, a professional translator will also be hired.
Please furthermore indicate your anticipated essay delivery date. There is considerable flexibility with the project to enable an organic writing process, though essays must be delivered by October 31, 2022 at the latest.
The target essay length is 20,000 to 30,000 characters (excluding spaces). This is a guideline and not a strict requirement.
Up to eight writers will be selected. If your proposal is chosen, you will be paid a fee of 500 euros as compensation for the right to publish your essay and promote it on social media (VAT 0% if billing in Finland; Value Added Tax Act, Article 45). You will maintain the copyright to your essay.
Payment is possible by invoice only. This requires that you bill from your own business, through a billing service, or are a member of a cooperative that bills for you; an employment relationship is not possible. In your proposal, please indicate how you will bill.
Please send your essay proposal and a sample of your work by email to hello at ritaoe dot org.
Funding for the essay series is generously provided by Climate Changemaker, a project financially supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation and carried out by the Finnish National Youth Council Allianssi. Additional funding is provided by the Arts Promotion Centre Finland.