Omar El Akkad is joining the festival after recently releasing his searing memoir One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. But he first burst onto the literary scene with his bestseller American War, set during a climate change instigated Second U.S. Civil War in the year 2074. Jennifer Mills, in Salvage, explores sisters (one suspended in outer space and another down on the ravaged earth) after ecological collapse. And Madeleine Watts, in Elegy, Southwest follows a young couple driving along the course of the Colorado River as it threatens to run dry. Through speculative fiction, each author brings harrowing yet gentle perspectives on living, and loving, alongside planetary environmental breakdown. Together, and moderated by The Garret's Astrid Edwards, they'll discuss what it will take to save the best parts of our humanity and how fiction helps us find it.