Authors Ken Liu and Karen Lord speak on the role of science fiction in painting decolonized future narratives. In their writing through the lens of science, engineering, and technology as well as cultural and intuitive bodies of knowledge. This conversation will be moderated by writer and journalist Amy Brady.
Cooper Climate Week 2021 is a series of lectures and events that aim to engage our communities in assessing the role of the climate crisis in our day-to-day lives. This year, we'll focus on the themes of reconstruction and deconstruction as we imagine all of the work ahead of us. The Cooper Climate Coalition aims to promote curiosity, interdisciplinary dialogue, and sustained engagement with the climate crisis.
The Cooper Climate Coalition is pleased to present a virtual series of lectures and events. *These lectures will be online only. RSVP HERE.
Ken Liu is an American author of speculative fiction. He has won the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, as well as top genre honors in Japan, Spain, and France, among other countries. Liu’s debut novel, The Grace of Kings, is the first volume in a silkpunk epic fantasy series, The Dandelion Dynasty, in which engineers play the role of wizards. His debut collection, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, has been published in more than a dozen languages. A second collection, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, followed. He also wrote the Star Wars novel, The Legends of Luke Skywalker. Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Liu worked as a software engineer, corporate lawyer, and litigation consultant. He frequently speaks at conferences and universities on a variety of topics, including futurism, cryptocurrency, history of technology, bookmaking, narrative futures, and the mathematics of origami. Liu lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts
Karen Lord is a Barbadian author, editor and research consultant has been a physics teacher, a diplomat, a part-time soldier, and an academic at various times and in various countries. Her debut novel Redemption in Indigo won the 2008 Frank Collymore Literary Award, the 2010 Carl Brandon Parallax Award, the 2011 William L. Crawford Award, the 2011 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature and the 2012 Kitschies Golden Tentacle (Best Debut), and was longlisted for the 2011 Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature and nominated for the 2011 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. Her second novel The Best of All Possible Worlds won the 2009 Frank Collymore Literary Award, the 2013 RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Awards for Best Science Fiction Novel, and was a finalist for the 2014 Locus Awards. Its sequel, The Galaxy Game, was published in January 2015. She is the editor of the 2016 anthology New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean. Her most recent novel, Unraveling, was published by DAW Books in June 2019.
Amy Brady is the Executive Director of Orion. Prior to joining the magazine she served as Deputy Publisher of Guernica. She is also the author of Ice: An American Obsession (Putnam), co-editor of The World As We Knew It (Catapult), and the former Editor-in-Chief of the Chicago Review of Books. Her writing on culture and climate change has appeared in O, the Oprah magazine, The New Republic, The Village Voice, Slate, The Houston Chronicle, and other places. She holds a PhD in literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and has won writing and research awards from the National Science Foundation, the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference, and the Library of Congress.
The Cooper Climate Coalition, an open body of students, faculty, and staff at The Cooper Union, facilitates conversations, events, and student projects within the institution that center the Climate Crisis and its intersections with races, classes, genders, sexualities, histories, economies, political structures and more.
Along with organizing Cooper Union’s Climate Week programs and events in the fall, the Climate Coalition takes responsibility for fostering interdisciplinarity throughout The Cooper Union in support of environmental action.
