A short while ago I was contacted by fellow SF Canada member Lisa Timpf to provide information on an article she was writing about editing anthologies. Lisa’s article, entitled “Anthology Editing: Advice and Insights from Those Who’ve Been There”recently appeared on the Jane Friedman site.
Lisa interviewed two publishers and several editors, including me, on what’s involved in putting out an anthology. The article was thorough and well written and provided useful insight and advice to would be anthology editors. Aspects included: what the job entails, what skills are needed (e.g. storytelling, organization, communication and negotiation, flexibility, the ability to deal with difficult situations, and the willingness to go outside your comfort zone), and the payoffs, of course.
The article covered all stages of producing the anthology, from pitching to a publisher to the process of acquisition and production. She ends her article with “Final Words” of her own reflection and great advice. Lisa draws on Christine Lowther’s advice to be patient and to be “honest about your priorities.” Given how long and involved the process can be (it took three years from call for submissions to final release for the latest anthology I edited), she rightly suggests strongly considering whether you “can dedicate the time and effort to editing without resenting the impact on [your] own writing.”
Lisa then ends with:
“If you, too, are on the fence, consider Nina Munteanu’s reflection on the anthology editing process. As she explains it, ‘Watching the anthology emerge through the slow collection of many outside sources of individual creativity, style and message is akin to watching the birth of a galaxy full of stars—gathered and orchestrated by you but so much more than the sum of its parts—comprising many singular notes of a symphony that together create something wondrous and beautiful.’
Lisa Timpf served as guest editor for Eye to the Telescope 32: Sports and Games. Her book reviews, poems, and short stories have appeared in a variety of venues, and her speculative poetry collection, Cats and Dogs in Space, is available from Hiraeth Publishing. You can find out more about Lisa’s writing and artwork at lisatimpf.blogspot.com, and also find her on Bluesky.
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Go to this link to read my review of Lisa’s speculative poetry collection, Cats and Dogs in Space.
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Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For the latest on her books, visit www.ninamunteanu.ca. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
On August 23, 2025, Through the Portal: Tales for a Hopeful Dystopia, edited by Lynn Hutchinson Lee and Nina Munteanu for Exile Editions, won the BC Sunshine Coast Award for 2025.
The fiction prize was award to Exile Edition’s 20th anthology along with three other fiction works that include Blackheart Man by Nalo Hopkinson, The Cipher by Genni Gunn, and Inside Outside by Faye Arcand.
Here is what the judges said about Through the Portal:
“Every story in here is a delicious short gem.”
“An ambitious project with an unusual slant of positivity in the face of a dystopian future has turned into a solid piece of work, incorporating a good range of stories, some very literary and abstract, others simple tales of destruction and regrowth or the hope of regrowth.”
“Characters and situations in the selected stories show optimism and the power of the human spirit across a wide array of possible near- and far-term futures.”
“Most of the situations are inherently believable based on what we know about climate, industry, and the powerful politics of denialism.”
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Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
The writing competition invites writers to submit a story about transformation, when a moment of epiphany causes one or more characters to change for the greener.
The transformative realisation doesn’t have to explicitly mention climate or the environment as long as it inspire behaviours with environmental implications (e.g. food, travel, consumption, gardening, cleaning, etc.), or the story could focus on the benefits of any greener alternative (e.g. environment, health, status, spirit, soul). For more about judging, prizes and terms and conditions, visit their site Green Stories Project.
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The Green Stories Project
Their mission is to create a cultural body of work that entertains and informs about green solutions, inspires green behaviour and raises awareness of the necessary transformations towards a sustainable economy.
Green Stories began as a series of free writing competitions across various formats to solicit stories that showcase what a sustainable society might look like. They have run over 20 free competitions since they set up in 2018.
Green Stories engage writers, academics and policymakers in sustainability projects. They also partnered with BAFTA on the #ClimateCharacters project to research whether audiences believe presenting characters with high carbon-consumption as aspirational is still acceptable.
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Cedar trees colonize a mossy log, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
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Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Given that several of the authors in the anthology are BC writers, Through the Portal: Tales from a Hopeful Dystopia(edited by Lynn Hutchinson Lee and Nina Munteanu) was considered and became part of the short list for fiction.
Post Script: On August 23, 2025, “Through the Portal” won the award for fiction. Here is what the judges said:
“Every story in here is a delicious short gem.”
“An ambitious project with an unusual slant of positivity in the face of a dystopian future has turned into a solid piece of work, incorporating a good range of stories, some very literary and abstract, others simple tales of destruction and regrowth or the hope of regrowth.”
“Characters and situations in the selected stories show optimism and the power of the human spirit across a wide array of possible near- and far-term futures.”
“Most of the situations are inherently believable based on what we know about climate, industry, and the powerful politics of denialism.”
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Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Author Nina Munteanu holding copy of Tales of Science II (photo by Jane Raptor)
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A few weeks ago, I looked into my mail box and found my contributor’s copy of “Tales of Science II” Anthology (edited by Marianne Labisch & Kiran Ramakrishnan) with my short story Die Polywasser-Gleichung (“The Polywater Equation”) inside. Beaming, I did a little dance because the anthology was marvelous looking! And it was all in German! (My mother is German, so I could actually read it; bonus!).
This science-fiction anthology, for which I was invited to contribute, collected seventeen short stories, all based on sound science. Here’s how the book jacket blurb (translated from German) describes the anthology:
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It’s all just fiction. Someone made it up; it has nothing to do with reality, right? Well, in this anthology, there’s at least a grain of truth in all the stories, because scientific sponsors collaborated with authors. Here, they looked into the future based on current research What does such an experiment look like? See for yourself what the authors and scientific sponsors have come up with: about finding a way to communicate with out descendants, finding the ideal partner, conveying human emotions to an AI, strange water phenomena [that’s my story], unexpected research findings, lonely bots, and much more. The occasion for this experiment is the 20th anniversary of the microsystems technology cluster microTEC Südwest e. V.
(cover image and illustrations by Mario Franke and Uli Benkick)
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In our initial correspondence, editor Marianne Labisch mentioned that they were “looking for short stories by scientists based on their research but ‘spun on’ to create a science fiction story;” she knew I was a limnologist and was hoping I would contribute something about water. I was glad to oblige her, having some ideas whirling in my head already. That is how “The Polywater Equation” (Die Polywasser-Gleichung) was born.
I’d been thinking of writing something that drew on my earlier research on patterns of colonization by periphyton (attached algae, mostly diatoms) in streams using concepts of fluid mechanics. Elements that worked themselves into the story and the main character, herself a limnologist, reflected some aspects of my own conflicts as a scientist interpreting algal and water data (you have to read the story to figure that out).
As I mentioned, the short story drew on my scientific work, which you can read about in the scientific journal Hydrobiologia. I was studying the community structure of periphyton (attached algae) that settled on surfaces in freshwater streams. My study involved placing glass slides in various locations in my control and experimental streams and in various orientations (parallel or facing the current), exposing them to colonizing algae. What I didn’t expect to see was that the community colonized the slides in a non-random way. What resulted was a scientific paper entitled “the effect of current on the distribution of diatoms settling on submerged glass slides.”
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A. Distribution of diatoms on a submerged glass slide parallel to the current; treated diatom frustules are white on a dark background. B. diagram of water movement around a submerged glass slide showing laminar flow on the inner face and turbulent flow on the edges (micrograph photo and illustration by Nina Munteanu)
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For more details of my work with periphyton, you can go to my article called Championing Change. How all this connects to the concept of polywater is something you need to read in the story itself.
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The Phenomenon of Polywater
The phenomenon started well before the 1960s, with a 19th century theory by Lord Kelvin (for a detailed account see The Rise and Fall of Polywater in Distillations Magazine). Kelvin had found that individual water droplets evaporated faster than water in a bowl. He also noticed that water in a glass tube evaporated even more slowly. This suggested to Kelvin that the curvature of the water’s surface affected how quickly it evaporated.
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Soviet chemist Boris Deryagin peers through a microscope in his lab
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In the 1960s, Nikolai Fedyakin picked up on Lord Kelvin’s work at the Kostroma Technological Institute and through careful experimentation, concluded that the liquid at the bottom of the glass tube was denser than ordinary water and published his findings. Boris Deryagin, director of the Institute of Physical Chemistry in Moscow, was intrigued and his team confirmed that the substance at the bottom of the glass tube was denser and thicker than ordinary water and had additional anomalous properties. This phase of water had a thick, gel-like consistency; it also had a higher stability, like a polymer, over bulk water. It demonstrated a lower freezing point, a higher boiling point, and much higher density and viscosity than ordinary water. It expanded more than ordinary water when heated and bent light differently. Deryagin became convinced that this “modified water” was the most thermodynamically stable form of water and that any water that came into contact with it would become modified as well. In 1966, Deryagin shared his work in a paper entitled “Effects of Lyophile Surfaces on the Properties of Boundary Liquid Films.” British scientist Brian Pethica confirmed Deryagin’s findings with his own experiments—calling the odd liquid “anomalous water”—and published in Nature. In 1969, Ellis Lippincott and colleagues published their work using spectroscopic evidence of this anomalous water, showing that it was arranged in a honeycomb-shaped network, making a polymer of water—and dubbed it “polywater.” Scientists proposed that instead of the weak Van der Waals forces that normally draw water molecules together, the molecules of ‘polywater’ were locked in place by stronger bonds, catalyzed somehow by the nature of the surface they were adjacent to.
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Molecular structure of polywater
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This sparked both excitement and fear in the scientific community, press and the public. Industrialists soon came up with ways to exploit this strange state of water such as an industrial lubricant or a way to desalinate seawater. Scientists further argued for the natural existence of ‘polywater’ in small quantities by suggesting that this form of water was responsible for the ability of winter wheat seeds to survive in frozen ground and how animals can lower their body temperature below zero degrees Celsius without freezing.
When one scientist discounted the phenomenon and blamed it on contamination by the experimenters’ own sweat, the significance of the results was abandoned in the Kuddelmuddel of scientific embarrassment. By 1973 ‘polywater’ was considered a joke and an example of ‘pathological science.’ This, despite earlier work by Henniker and Szent-Györgyi, which showed that water organized itself close to surfaces such as cell membranes. Forty years later Gerald Pollack at the University of Washington identified a fourth phase of water, an interfacial water zone that was more stable, more viscous and more ordered, and, according to biochemist Martin Chaplin of South Bank University, also hydrophobic, stiffer, more slippery and thermally more stable. How was this not polywater?
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The Polywater Equation
In my story, which takes place in Berlin, 2045, retired limnologist Professor Engel grapples with a new catastrophic water phenomenon that looks suspiciously like the original 1960s polywater incident:
The first known case of polywater occurred on June 19, 2044 in Newark, United States. Housewife Doris Buchanan charged into the local Water Department office on Broad Street with a complaint that her faucet had clogged up with some kind of pollutant. She claimed that the faucet just coughed up a blob of gel that dangled like clear snot out of the spout and refused to drop. Where was her water? she demanded. She’d paid her bill. But when she showed them her small gel sample, there was only plain liquid water in her sample jar. They sent her home and logged the incident as a prank. But then over fifty turbines of the combined Niagara power plants in New York and Ontario ground to a halt as everything went to gel; a third of the state and province went dark. That was soon followed by a near disaster at the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station in Ajax, Ontario when the cooling water inside a reactor vessel gummed up, and the fuel rods—immersed in gel instead of cooling water—came dangerously close to overheating, with potentially catastrophic results. Luckily, the gel state didn’t last and all went back to normal again.
If you read German, you can pick up a copy of the anthology in Dussmanndas KulturKaufhaus or Thalia, both located in Berlin but also available through their online outlets. You’ll have to wait to read the English version; like polywater, it’s not out yet.
Henniker, J.C. 1949. “The depth of the surface zone of a liquid”. Rev. Mod. Phys. 21(2): 322–341.
Kelderman, Keene, et. al. 2022. “The Clean Water Act at 50: Promises Half Kept at the Half-Century Mark.” Environmental Integrity Project (EIP). March 17. 75pp.
Munteanu, N. & E. J. Maly, 1981. The effect of current on the distribution of diatoms settling on submerged glass slides. Hydrobiologia 78: 273–282.
Szent-Györgyi, A. 1960. “Introduction to a Supramolecular Biology.” Academic Press, New York. 135 pp.
Roemer, Stephen C., Kyle D. Hoagland, and James R. Rosowski. 1984. “Development of a freshwater periphyton community as influenced by diatom mucilages.” Can. J. Bot.62: 1799-1813.
Schwenk, Theodor. 1996. “Sensitive Chaos.” Rudolf Steiner Press, London. 232 pp.
Szent-Györgyi, A. 1960. “Introduction to a Supramolecular Biology.” Academic Press, New York. 135 pp.
Wilkens, Andreas, Michael Jacobi, Wolfram Schwenk. 2005. “Understanding Water”. Floris Books, Edinburgh. 107 pp.
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Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Free Times Cafe venue at night (photo by Ashish Pillai)
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Appropriately, on the eve of Earthday, Exile Editions and Stelliform Press launched two eco-fiction books at one of Toronto’s oldest and established cultural/dining venues, Free Times Café, by Kensington Market. Both books were works of eco-fiction and climate fiction that focused on issues of environmental treatment and destruction. Both works focused on hope.
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Top left: Free Times Cafe venue at night (photo by Nick Wons). Top right: Michael Callaghan of Exile Editions, Lynn Hutchinson Lee, Selena Middleton of Stelliform Press, Nina Munteanu. Bottom: Lynne Sargent reads from Portal.
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Exile launched their anthology Through the Portal: Tales of a Hopeful Dystopia, edited by Lynn Hutchinson Lee and Nina Munteanu. It was their twentieth in a series; this one focused on hope in a climate-changing world that is progressively becoming more dystopic. Short stories and poems were read by authors.
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Top left: Ursula Pflug reads from Portal. Top right: Michael Callaghan introduces the anthology. Bottom: Lynn Hutchinson Lee reads from her novel Origins of Desire in Orchid Fens.
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Stelliform launched Origins of Desire in Orchid Fens a novel written by Lynn Hutchinson Lee, who read several excerpts of her novel.
Both works have received much praise.
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Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Art is the oar that guides us through dystopian rivers
Mary Woodbury, dragonfly.eco
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Through the Portal: Tales from a Hopeful Dystopiathe ecofiction anthology edited by Lynn Hutchinson Lee and me and published December 2024 by Exile Editions, recently received another wonderful review from Mary Woodbury at dragonfly.eco. Here is an excerpt:
As the world teeters on disaster, what saves us ranges from graceful failure to full-fledged resistance and opposition. Through the Portal, an anthology of eco-fiction, offers 35 artful, provoking stories to propel us forward. The book serves to reconnect us with Nature in diverse storytelling, from cautionary tales to fiction that brims with hope while also helping us grieve what we’ve lost—described as solastalgia.
The anthology is a stunning collection of short stories and poetry that address our most existential concerns through metaphysical, epic, solarpunk, mythological, and contemporary perspectives. From landscape and weather transformations to stars, fairy tales, parking lots, mermaids, whales, storms, bees, and much more, the reader is treated to a journey of colorful narratives woven into a chronology: imagination, after the fall, and Earth hour.
Hopeful dystopias are so much more than an apparent oxymoron: they are in some fundamental way the spearhead of the future—and ironically often a celebration of human spirit by shining a light through the darkness of disaster. In Through the Portal: Tales from a Hopeful Dystopia, award-winning authors of speculative fiction Lynn Hutchinson Lee and Nina Munteanu present a collection that explores strange new terrains and startling social constructs, quiet morphing landscapes, dark and terrifying warnings, lush newly told folk and fairy tales.—Exile Editions
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Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
A recent favourable review of Through the Portal: Tales from a Hopeful Dystopia (edited by Lynn Hutchinson Lee and Nina Munteanu, released by Exile Editions) appeared in On Spec Magazine. The review by Lorina Stephens applauded the anthology for its genuine Canadian perspective, excellent writing, and “remarkable voice of many.”
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Excerpts of the review follow below:
“What unfolds in these 35 stories is a quintessentially Canadian perspective on climate change, the probable dystopia of our own making, and how we as not only humans, but Canadians, may deal with the breakdown of environment and society, of how we construct mythology to interpret our experience.”
The stories, writes Stephens, “are filled with that remarkable pragmatism and resilience, little say a reverence for the land, which seems to be hardwired into a people who deal with constant change, and sometimes extremes, dictated by climate and geography.”
“…the quality of the writing from this enclave of writers is quite remarkable…I am steadfast in my praise of the skill of these writers, and the stories they’ve crafted, collected into this remarkable voice of many.”
“The stories manage that most adroit of transformations from genre fiction meant as escapism and consumable, to that other dimension which is provoking, illuminating, and exactly what good literary fiction should engender.”
Through the Portal has received other favourable reviews:
“Through the Portal offers intriguing and imaginative glimpses into the future.” – The Seaboard Review
“A stunning collection of short stories and poetry that address our most existential concerns through metaphysical, epic, solarpunk, mythological, and contemporary perspectives.” – dragonfly.eco.
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Apex Book Company (publisher of Apex Magazine) has extended their deadline for short stories to appear in their anthology “ECO24, The Year’s Best Speculative Ecofiction” edited by Marissa van Uden. They are looking to purchase non-exclusive world anthology rights for only previously published short stories of eco-fiction published in the last calendar year (Jan 1 to Dec 31 2024) to publish in their imprint Violet Lichen Books.
Here is their description of the eco-fiction anthology:
This anthology “showcases some of the most vivid, thought-provoking, and emotionally affecting ecofiction published in the previous calendar year. Speculative ecofiction is defined as stories that explore our place in the natural world and our relationships to non-human life (e.g. focused on themes related to ecology, nature, the environment, climate, conservation, wildlife and animal rights) and which also fall into speculative genres such as science fiction, fantasy, Weird fiction, New Weird, anthropomorphic fantasy, magical realism.
Ecofiction engages with some of the most urgent issues facing us today and also looks ahead to the possibilities of the future. Even when dealing with dark or tragic themes, ecofiction stories are expressions of our human connection to the most beautiful planet we know, and to all of earthlife.
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
I recently participated in author readings from the eco-fiction anthology “Through the Portal: Tales from a Hopeful Dystopia.” Co-editor Lynn Hutchinson Lee and I opened the session with some introductory remarks, followed by readings by four of the anthology writers: Annaliese Schultz, Jade Wallace, Isabella Mori, and Matt Freeman.
Co-editors Lynn Hutchinson Lee and Nina Munteanu introduce the anthology at the reading; authors and moderator pictured above
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The readings generated a lot of discussion about the nature and role of eco-fiction and stories in general on how we view the world and how that, in turn, influences the choices we make in life. Below, I include a short story excerpt and audience reaction for each author who read.
Annaliese Schultz read from her story Water & Oil. “Bursting from months, maybe years, of inertia born of dismay (engendered by the unending disasters of the world), Zip is instantly galvanized and greater than himself and gone.” One audience member shared that her story “sounded horrifyingly too possible.”
Jade Wallace read from her story Pluck. “It was only after I started working at the florist a few months ago that I began to think of plants as things that move. I learned that algae may swim towards the light; sundew can catch insects in their stalks; the leaves of touch-me-nots will slouch when they feel rain.” A member of the audience shared that “with what we now know about the way trees/plants communicate with each other, it was a neat story of crossing over to try to tell humans something.”
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Jade Wallace reads from her story “Pluck”
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Isabella Mori read from her story Shift. “Red Nelly, that’s what they called my grandmother; always looked a little dishevelled. So did her living room. Four book shelves were squeezed into the small room, sagging with dark tomes, oversized coffee-table books, Greenpeace brochures, and video cassettes that even her questionable looking TV couldn’t play anymore.” Someone in the audience mentioned that the author had woven a very human story. “Stories are sometimes better teachers than all other forms available to us. I felt moments of warmness and reflection.” Another audience member added, “The wisdom of animals and plants—there’s hope for the planet. I’m ordering this book from my local independent as soon as I close his meeting!”
Matt Freeman read from his story Birdseed: “Near the end I began to devote the bulk of my time to what I believed to be a gregarious individual of the species Corvus brachyrhynchos—the American Crow. By then a chemical scythe had begun to carve up the clouds hanging over the lands of ‘Vancouver’ in a psychedelic frenzy, and the shocked blue skyline often bled in shades of lime.” One audience member shared, “I loved he way ‘birdish’ words kept appearing: perch, cage. This may be Matt’s first published story, but I’m sure it won’t be the last.” Another audience member shared, “I loved the connection with the wisdom and personification of your crow.”
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Nina Munteanu commenting on one of the readings
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The readings generated a lot of discussion about the nature and role of eco-fiction and stories in general on how we view the world and how that, in turn, influences the choices we make in life.
Audience members shared that they found the readings inspiring. One member shared, “I find stories and poems have a more transcendent or at least deeper connection when read aloud. I wasn’t sure what to expect. So glad to be a part of this reading. The book sounds amazing.” Another member shared, “Keep hope alive!”
For more about how this anthology came about go to my previous post on Through the Portal.
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Hopeful dystopias are so much more than an apparent oxymoron: they are in some fundamental way the spearhead of the future – and ironically often a celebration of human spirit by shining a light through the darkness of disaster. In Through the Portal: Tales from a Hopeful Dystopia, award-winning authors of speculative fiction Lynn Hutchinson Lee and Nina Munteanu present a collection that explores strange new terrains and startling social constructs, quiet morphing landscapes, dark and terrifying warnings, lush newly-told folk and fairy tales.–Exile Editions
“A stunning collection of short stories and poetry that address our most existential concerns.”
“Will ingenuity, love, and respect for the earth help us work through whatever changes might lie ahead? Through the Portal offers hope that these qualities, if not enough in and of themselves, will help us find our way.”
Farmer’s field at sunset, winter in Ontario (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
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Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Nina Munteanu Writing Coach 