WRITING FOR A SUBSTANTIALLY ALTERED WORLD
Creative writing and climate

As the world around us changes, despite and in spite of the COVID-19, writing, art and conversation are infused with the alteration of the surrounding landscapes and spaces. It’s Freezing in LA! is a magazine dedicated to finding the brightest, freshest new writing about the environment, from law to theatre. In this series of online workshops with maat, presented in the context of the Mode Diaries writing programme, we explore creative writing as a vehicle to respond to the climate crisis. Through workshops on the topic of “Solastalgia” — emotional or existential distress caused by environmental change — participants will be guided by It’s Freezing in LA! and a fine selection of collaborators to produce and explore new writing on the most complex challenge of our time.

Writing for a Substantially Altered World is the second Writing Working Unit carried out under the initiative Mode Diaries and results from the challenge made to It’s Freezing in LA! by maat. The Mode Diaries initiative is based on diary-keeping as a form of writing, this initiative creates a field of interpretive potential in the context from which it originates: maat Mode 2020 — a programme of exhibitions and activities of a public, experimental and participative nature on the theme of “Prototyping the museum”.

Coordination
It’s Freezing in LA!
Martha Dillon, editor
Nina Carter, art editor and co-creative director

Collaborations
Aché Atta-Boateng, biologist
Billie Manning, poet
Charlotte Ager, illustrator
Elizabeth Joyce, biologist
Lizzie Roeble, evolutionary biologist 
Nicolas Baird, palaeontologist
Phoebe Nightingale, writer