Tomas Baiza’s story, A Seal’s Song, will be featured in an upcoming anthology from Black Lawrence Press focusing on the climate crisis and humanity’s impact on our natural environment. According to the editors, “featuring short fiction from authors around the globe, “Fire & Water: Stories from the Anthropocene” takes readers on a rare journey through the physical and emotional landscape of the climate crisis – not in the future, but today.”
Baiza, director of the Advising and Academic Support Center and creative writing undergraduate, wrote the story in response to an in-class prompt to use a current news headline. “I had just read about how polar bears had invaded a remote Russian village in search of food and thought that there must be a more dramatic story that led to that desperate act. I ended up writing a coming-of-age story focusing on an outcast seal and her need to do good in the world by saving her colony.”
“Fire & Water” will be released in August, 2021.
Publisher link to the book: Fire & Water: Stories from the Anthropocene