In this masterclass, novelist Ben Smith will offer a guide to engaging with big subjects, such as climate change, in fiction. Through a discussion of his own practice, he will ask how we write about the things we care about, how to negotiate slippery genres such as ‘Cli-fi’, and how engaging with vast subjects such as climate change forces us to rethink traditional ideas of plot, character and setting. Drawing on a decade’s experience of working with scientists, Ben will discuss some of the lessons he’s learned about working collaboratively across disciplines and how this process has taken his work in unexpected directions.

Ben Smith is an author and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Exeter. His research and writing explore narratives of climate change and the Anthropocene. His debut novel Doggerland was a Guardian Book of the Year and won the ASLE-UKI Creative Book Prize. He is currently running an AHRC-funded project, A History of Storms: New Approaches to Climate Fiction and Climate Literacy, partnering with the UK Met Office.