The 2026 Climate Fiction Prize Shortlist: In Conversation with the Judges

Discover the 2026 Climate Fiction Prize shortlist at a special event with this year’s Prize judges and leading literary voices – Arifa Akbar, Dr Friederike Otto, Jessie Greengrass and Simon Savidge. Together, they’ll explore the novels on the shortlist, reflect on their experience of judging the Prize, and discuss why climate fiction is one of the most exciting and necessary spaces in storytelling today. Join us for an evening of insightful conversation about the power of fiction in helping us understand, imagine and navigate our rapidly changing world.

About the Climate Fiction Prize

The Climate Fiction Prize celebrates novels that explore what it means to be human in our rapidly changing world. Founded by Climate Spring, the global organisation transforming how the climate crisis is represented in entertainment and popular culture, the Prize recognises compelling, genre-led storytelling that engages with the realities of climate change. It highlights how climate fiction spans genres, from thrillers and sci-fi to romance and comedy, showcasing the breadth and diversity of stories that engage with the social, cultural and emotional dimensions of climate change.

Event Schedule

6:30pm: Pre-event socialising and networking
A cash bar will be available for refreshments.

6:45pm: Event begins

8:00pm: Event ends

Speakers

Arifa Akbar is chief theatre critic at The Guardian. She is the former literary editor of The Independent where she also worked as a news reporter and arts correspondent. Her first book, Consumed: A Sister’s Story, was longlisted for the Baillie Gifford prize and shortlisted for the Costa Biography Prize, the PEN Ackerley Prize and the Jhalak Prize. Her second book, Wolf Moon: A Woman’s Journey into the Night, published in July 2025, was a BBC Radio Four Book of the Week. She is a former trustee of English PEN and the Orwell Foundation, where she co-administered its book prize.

Jessie Greengrass is the author of two novels: The High House, which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Prize 2021, the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2022 and the Encore Award 2022, and Sight, was published 2018 and shortlisted for the 2018 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her collection of short stories, An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw it was published in 2015. It won the Edge Hill Prize 2016, a Somerset Maugham Award, and was shortlisted for the Sunday Times PFD Young Writer of the Year Award. She lives in Northumberland with her partner and their two children.

Friederike Otto is a professor in climate science at Imperial College London. She is physicist by training and obtained her doctorate in philosophy of science in 2011. Her main area of expertise is on extreme weather events such as droughts, heat waves and storms, and understanding whether and to what extent these are made more likely or intense due to climate change. Dr Otto is co-founder and lead of World Weather Attribution (WWA), an international effort to analyse and communicate the possible influence of climate change on extreme weather events. In addition to well over a 100 academic papers she published two non-fiction books: Angry Weather in 2020 and Climate InJustice in 2025. In 2021 Fredi was recognised for her co-founding of WWA on the TIME100 list as one of the world’s most influential individuals, according to the renowned TIME magazine and as one of the top 10 people who made a difference in science in 2021, by the journal Nature. In 2023 she received the prestigious German Environmental Prize and an honorary doctorate from Concordia University in Montreal in 2024 and one from Edinburgh University in 2025.

Simon Savidge is a bibliophile, broadcaster and presenter. He has judged the Costa Book Awards, Portico Prize and Desmond Elliott Prize. He has appeared on the Booker Prize Live on BBC, recommended books on BBC 5 Live and BBC Radio 2 and co-hosted Turn Up For The Books on BBCSounds. He has co-presented three seasons of Sky Arts Book Club and hosted Sky Arts Live from Hay in 2023. His YouTube channel Savidge Reads has over 2.5 million views. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.