Climate Writer Residencies

Paid writing opportunities for expansive climate writing.

In 2025, Upstart & Crow will launch three paid, month-long residencies to support an original, creative nonfiction text that offers unique, enchanting ways for people to think about our relationship between each other and the natural world, and to support tangible solutions. Writers will be selected by a jury to explore ideas relating to:

  • Climate and Class: The false opposition of environment and economy may have been disproven time and again, but it remains a core narrative in Canada, the US and beyond. While climate change disproportionately affects working class populations, many have failed to adequately address how climate policies are of utmost important to working class populations. Moreover, the vast majority of climate discourse in the 21st century is written from a middle-class perspective. What are the new narratives and stories that prioritize discussions about our relationships with nature from an underheard population? We need to answer this, especially in a time of growing polarization.
  • Bioregional Possibility: For many years now, scholars and activists and systems thinkers (and at least some philanthropists) have advocated for bioregionalism as a way to both reset human relationships with nature, and to reframe our social and economic systems around abundance, regeneration and equity. This concept has rarely been explored through narrative; this residency will help to expand an understanding of what bioregionalism can mean, for individuals and communities.
  • Nature and Ability: The concept of “conquering” nature or, at the least, of showing physical prowess through endurance of nature, has been a primary mode through which Western societies have engaged with the natural world for decades. This residency explores a more complex relationship with the natural world—and a more gentle one, too: one which exists with physical disability, with aging bodies, with imperfect forms. In doing so, this writing can help to change the lens through which we see not only the natural world, but ourselves.