In an essay titled, Writing the Real, Catherine Bush writes: “Literature is an art of navigating between presences and absences, making the usually unseen visible and reversing disappearances large and small. Yet writers also leave traces of unacknowledged absences for others to notice. Whether or not it is on the page, the climate crisis imparts meaning: its presence or absence denotes something.” (Canadian Notes and Queries, Special Issue: Writing in the Age of Unravelling, Winter 2020)

Bush is the author of five novels, including Blaze Island (2020). The book was inspired by Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, and follows a father-daughter relationship on a fictionalized wind-swept remote Canadian island. The novel asks: How do you imagine a tomorrow when the present seems, whichever way you look, to be hovering on the brink of catastrophe? The novel follows a passionate climate scientist who experiments with weather engineering. This in turn raises larger questions about interfering with nature and the harm or good that may result.

Catherine joined us in the Feminist Enterprise Commons in October 2020 on The Fine Print, an author conversation series with contemporary feminist authors hosted and produced by Lana Pesch.