Habitat Press Introduces Groundbreaking Climate Fiction Novel, Fairhaven – A Novel of Climate Optimism
New novel approaches climate solutions from an Asia Pacific perspective
HONG KONG – March 2024 – What will it take to fix the climate crisis? Habitat Press (UK) will launch its new full-length climate novel, Fairhaven – A Novel of Climate Optimism, at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival on March 7, 2024.
Co-authors Jan Lee and Steve Willis created this new novel with the benefit of more than 40 years of combined experience in innovation engineering, climate protection, and corporate sustainability. The new novel follows the path of Grace Chan, born in Penang, Malaysia, who has experienced the dire consequences of climate change personally and is taking action borne both of hope and desperation. Her story explores the implications, both at the global scale and and on a deeply personal level, of our common dilemma and the possibilities that are open to us.
Most ‘cli fi’ novels present apocalyptic scenarios for the future. In an engrossing, readily-accessible story for general readers, Fairhaven envisions how a range of practical climate adaptation and mitigation solutions could work when fully implemented. These include land reclamation, carbon sequestration, rebuilding ocean fishing stocks, and even re-freezing the Arctic.
Fairhaven opens in 2036 as Grace is days away from assuming office as the President of the newly-formed Ocean Independent State. Driving along the edge of a Penang dyke to clear her mind, her truck crashes and she comes close to death as the tide rises. As she reviews her life, the reader comes to understand what has brought her (and the world) to this point, how she will move forward, and the surprising role that ordinary individuals can play.
Nigel Topping, UN High Level Climate Action Champion, COP26, praised the new novel: ‘We can't navigate our way to a better future fed on a diet of nothing but doom and gloom. We need stories to challenge, provoke and inspire to help us dare to imagine and act with hope – Fairhaven does just that!’
John Englander, author of the 2021 novel, Moving to Higher Ground, Rising Sea Level and the Path Forward, stressed the importance of storytelling in addressing the climate crisis. ‘No turning back now. We have crossed the threshold where fact will be stranger than fiction. Good climate fiction like Fairhaven, may help us envision a path forward and give us inspiration for the challenging journey ahead.’
To access Fairhaven – A Novel of Climate Optimism:
Buy the eBook or hard copy via Amazon UK or Amazon USA (hard copy orders will go live only on March 7; eBook can be pre-ordered)
Buy a hard copy at the HKILF book shop operated by Bookazine at the Fringe Club Anita Chan Lai-ling Gallery, 2 Lower Albert Road, Central, Hong Kong. Opening Hours: 6 March - 8 March (4:00pm - 9:00pm) and 9 March - 10 March (9:30am - 7:00pm)
Buy a signed copy at the launch event on March 7, 2024
Follow the online serial on Substack
About Jan Lee
Jan Lee has held senior Asia Pacific corporate sustainability roles in multinational companies for the past several decades, and is a recognized sustainability and ESG leader in Hong Kong’s business sector. Having first published work via Telnet in the 1990s, Jan resumed creative writing in retirement. Jan’s fiction and poetry has been published in Soft Star Magazine, Dark Winter, and others, collected in Route One and Other Stories, and recognized in Writers of the Future and Green Stories. Jan is Editor-in-Chief of The Apostrophe, the quarterly magazine of the Hong Kong Writers Circle.
About Steve Willis
Steve Willis is an engineer and innovator with decades of experience providing solutions to environmental problems for large scale industries. The start of the covid lockdowns gave him pause to think carefully about climate solutions, what was needed and what it would take to get there. This led to a collaboration with the GreenStories team to produce the No More Fairy Tales anthology for COP27. Steve continues to work on large scale climate solutions, currently developing a CO2 sequestration mineralisation process which can be deployed at the million tonne scale.
About Habitat Press
Habitat Press was set up to support publications emerging from the Green Stories project that provides resources and competitions to encourage writers to embed green solutions into books aimed at mainstream readers. Books published by Habitat Press meet the criteria of being entertaining in their own right and adopting a solution-focused approach to environmental issues.
For more information: fairhavenclimatenovel@gmail.com