A Minnesotan’s story collection is climate fiction but it captures increasingly familiar reality

CATHY WURZER: For some folks, talking about climate change is enough to make you want to crawl under the bed. St. Paul author Ashley Shelby gets that. She takes on climate impact in an especially inventive way in her new short story collection entitled Honeymoons in Temporary Locations. MPR's Emily Bright just couldn't stop thinking about it.

EMILY BRIGHT: So you have a background as an environmental journalist, and tell me how that's influenced your fiction.

ASHLEY SHELBY: My entire body of work has to do with the crossroads of humanity and environment, from Red River Rising, which was about the '97 Grand Forks flood, which in 1997 was in the top five of the most expensive natural disasters in American history, and it was $5 billion. And then, of course, my work with climate is-- I mean, it sort of speaks for itself that we're all living through this moment of transition, and it's happening more quickly than I think we expected.

Although, if people have been listening to the scientists, this wouldn't be surprising. And it's just been kind of a difficult space to be in as a writer to have written something that you thought was speculative, but even during the writing process, watch it become documentary and ask yourself, what am I doing here? Am I imagining, or am I documenting?

EMILY BRIGHT: Give me an example of something that you started hearing in the news even as you thought you were creating it.

ASHLEY SHELBY: Sure. So I started writing this in 2016, 2017, and one of the first pieces I wrote was a satirical investment newsletter where this investment guru suggests pulling out of insurance because all of the home insurance companies have pulled out of Florida or will do so.

And at the time-- I like my work to be plausible. I thought, if this continues as scientists are saying that it will, I can't see any other option for these companies but to stop insuring homes that are on the coast. But I did not expect to see them start to do that so soon. And so when it started to happen, I look at the story. And I think, do I keep this in here? Because now, it seems too on point.

Now, it seems almost cringe because it's like I'm pointing out something that's happening. And in conversations with my editor over at the University of Minnesota Press, he convinced me to just-- no. You need to keep that in, because that was true in the moment that you were writing it. It was speculative in the moment that you were writing it, and it says something that it has become a reality. To see things come to pass is a really weird feeling and not a good one.

EMILY BRIGHT: Another one of your speculative short stories is kind of a love story. It's the title story, which is Honeymoons in Temporary Locations, and the young couple in question is trying to relocate as climate migrants of means to Duluth.

ASHLEY SHELBY: Right. I feel this more and more with each passing day, but I think Minnesota is going to be considered probably one of the most climate stable areas of the country. And I think we are going to start seeing-- and I think we have already start to see climate migrants, domestic climate migrants, coming from coasts.

Because when you start looking at the map, and you see that hurricane Milton coming over Florida, and you see the rest of the country, and you look at Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, the Dakotas-- I can see why someone living on the coast of Florida would say, I want to be as safe as I can, so I'm going to come up here. But that kind of exodus creates pressures.

Embedded in this book is a critique of capitalism and how the ruling class is commodifying climate change and will continue to do so, even though, in my opinion, they're the reason we're in this mess. So I wanted to explore the idea of Minnesota, welcoming Minnesota, becoming a haven for climate migrants, just like they have-- Minnesota's been a haven for refugees from all over the world for many, many years.

But I feel in my bones that there's going to be a hierarchy for people who are going to be given the privilege to do those things, whether it's because they have money or power, whether it's the color of their skin, the type of family background they have. And so that's a piece of reality that we've lived with for, I think, as long as this country has been a country. It's going to follow us into this transition.

EMILY BRIGHT: So the second half of the book is kind of a series presented as found writings. We've got Craigslist ads from climate refugees. We've got menus.

This series of-- they read as short stories, but they're presented as kind of documenting these people who were given trials of this drug that was created to address how people feel about climate impact. And you create a wonderful term for that. So can you tell me about that world that you're creating?

ASHLEY SHELBY: Sure. So Dr. Glenn Albrecht, an environmental philosopher out of Australia, coined a term called solastalgia, which I think a lot of people are probably familiar with, or they will become familiar with. It's not a medical disorder. It's a term to describe the feelings, the very unique feelings that we have as the planet changes around us. And it has been described as the feeling of homesickness before you have left home, which I find poignant and terrifying.

That's sort of the inspiration for this whole collection, because I have struggled emotionally and mentally with processing what's happening, especially when you feel powerless, that this is somehow out of your hands, and that yet we all know what's going to happen, but no one's doing anything about it. It can create a really difficult emotional and mental space to be in. And so when I found this term, I was just completely captured by it, because I thought this is just the most perfect term.

So in these stories, I have turned this into an actual medical disorder that needs to be cured because it's affecting the labor supply. People are in this state of depression and sadness and paralysis, loss of hope, and all the things that go with that-- also, this fractured biophilia, which is Edmund Wilson's term for just our natural affinity to affiliate with life, whether it's an ant or another human being, that we're drawn to that.

The pharmaceutical industry in this world has developed a drug that will kind of fracture that biophilic relationship so that people don't really care that the habitats are disappearing, even the ones from their childhood, that the seasons are now kind of melding into one. All the things that we notice and that make us feel so nostalgic can be wiped away with this climate feel pill.

EMILY BRIGHT: One thing I noticed as a kind of a theme underneath the book is how much the impetus to address climate is placed upon individuals, even as individuals have some power, but not enough. Whether it's, you need to fix this by taking a drug, or in these little Craigslist ads, people say, male seeking whomever status climate compliant. And that's something else that is both speculative and very real.

ASHLEY SHELBY: Right. It's one of the things I grapple with most is this feeling that individuals are not wanting to talk about climate change, not wanting to think about it because it hurts, because so much of it is a feeling of guilt. What did I do to cause this, and what am I continuing to do by driving my kids to soccer practice, by just living my life? Without recognizing that the world around us-- not the world, actually.

The United States was built for cars, so you cannot bike your kid to soccer practice when it's 20 miles away. It's either that or your kid doesn't play soccer anymore. It's almost as if to address climate change in the way that we're told we need to, you have to withdraw from society completely. And that's not fair, because this is not something that we did.

This is something that a handful of powerful people-- I won't say that they've created, but they've known about-- they've known about for years. Exxon's known about this since the '70s-- and that they've hidden that from us. And then for them to turn and put it on us. And even when they're selling electric cars, it's on us. Well, you should get an electric car, because it's better for the environment.

So I understand why people don't want to think about climate change, because they think, I should be doing something, but I don't know what to do, and nothing that I do seems like it will be enough. And I'll share something that Eric Holthaus, meteorologist and climate communicator, told me, which is that one of the most powerful things that individuals can do is literally just talk about it with peers and family.

It can be off the cuff. Just say, oh my gosh, this Milton is a monster storm. Didn't we just have Helene? I worry for my kids, and I wonder what our politicians are doing. I'm thinking that when I go to the ballot box this year, I'm going to maybe do some research on who is most engaged with the climate question. Boom. End of conversation.

Because right now, it's almost like talking about death or your sex life. People are almost embarrassed to bring it up, because it's depressing. I argue that it is what Timothy Morton, a philosopher, calls a hyperobject, which is something that is so vast and so complex that it literally cannot be comprehended.

EMILY BRIGHT: Which is where fiction comes in.

ASHLEY SHELBY: Exactly.

CATHY WURZER: That was MPR's Emily Bright speaking with St. Paul author Ashley Shelby about her new short story collection, Honeymoons in Temporary Locations, which is out right now.