Paolo Bacigalupi

Orange and gold sunset image of a hot air balloon over a European city

ICF Lecturer 2015: Paolo Bacigalupi

In September 2015, award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi visited Arizona State University and gave the second annual Imagination and Climate Futures Lecture. Paolo Bacigalupi is a Hugo, Nebula, and Michael L. Printz Award Winner, as well as a National Book Award Finalist. He is also a winner of the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, the John W. Campbell Award, and a three-time winner of the Locus Award. His short fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and High Country News. His latest novel for adults is The New York Times Bestseller “The Water Knife”, a near-future thriller about climate change and drought in the southwestern United States. During his public lecture at the Tempe Center for the Arts, Paolo spoke about “The Water Knife,” the future of the Colorado River and the power of fiction to help us imagine what the future might have in store for the US Southwest. He also met with students and faculty of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, and participated in a workshop on Art, Science and Imagination – Developing Transdisciplinary Research & Teaching to Shape the Future.

You can read about Paolo’s ICF Lecture here: Deliberate Dystopias: Uncovering our climate futures with Paolo Bacigalupi. We sat down with Paolo to talk about climate change, storytelling and the power of the imagination.

The Power of Language

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Storytelling, Emotions, and Social Change

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The Power of Fiction

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In 2014, we asked similar questions to Margaret Atwood, world-renowned and award-winning Canadian author and environmental activist. You can find the videos here.