Welcome to the Creative Pen podcast. I'm Joanna Penn, thriller author and creative entrepreneur,

bringing you interviews, inspiration and information on writing, publishing options and marketing ideas for your book.

You can find the episode show notes, your free author blueprint and lots more information at

TheCreativepen.com.

And that's Penn with a double N.

And here's the show.

Hello, creatives.

I'm Giovanna Penn, and this is episode number 587 of the podcast, and is is Tuesday the 16th of November 2021 as I record this.

In today's show, I'm talking to Denise Baden about writing for the environment, and we discuss

whether stories can, in fact, save the world. The relentless news about climate change can leave us despondent, but what if we can

use fiction to help people with ideas of what the future could look like and the actions we can

take to change things? I've experienced this myself recently when I read Kim Stanley Robinson's book

The Ministry for the Future, which helped me see

what could be done, rather than focusing on bad news all the time, which we've had in recent

weeks with the COP26 conference. Denise has a mission to use fiction to help the environment,

and Orna Ross from the Alliance of Independent authors is now sponsoring

the Green Stories Prize, which Janice explains and I have an audio clip from Orna as well, explaining

why she wanted to get involved. So I hope you enjoy this extra episode on what is such an important

topic. And I hope you'll consider entering one of the green prizes, the novel

or the short story or there's lots on the website for options. And we also talk towards the end

about how ecologically friendly is publishing anyway. And that has some very interesting things.

So I hope you enjoy the interview. Denise Baden is the professor

...