This year, the Indiana Writers Center, Dance Kaleidoscope, Jewish Community Center, and Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library are partnering to present, “Leave Them Something”, a Spirit and Place program that uses paintings of Edith Vonnegut as a springboard to explore the devastating effects of climate change and to imagine what the future will look like for ourselves and our children when we do what’s needed to reverse them.

“Leave Them Something” is a free Zoom class offered to those who’d like to participate in this project. This class will focus on worldbuilding.

Early science fiction brought us strange visions of the future: electricity used to bring someone back to life, traveling to the deepest reaches of the ocean in submersibles, watches with video screens that connect us instantly to loved ones– all came true. But a world drowned in too much water, deserts that once were oases stretching across the horizon, incredible delicacies that come at the literal price of human life: those also came true.

Now we’re at a place where we can imagine the next fifty, hundred, three hundred, a thousand years. Artists and authors shape the future with their ideas. In this workshop, we’re going to imagine futures both desperate and abundant. We’re going to use our imagination to build a better future, or a darker one, in our art. Dystopian, utopian or somewhere between, worldbuilding is the key to writing our future, one story at a time.

We’d love to include work written in this class or on your own in an online anthology that reflects the diversity of experiences in our community. For information on submissions, visit https://www.indianawriters.org/leave-them-something/

To view Vonnegut’s paintings: https://www.vonnegutlibrary.org/edithvonnegutexhibit/

*This class will be recorded. If you cannot make it to the live Zoom class, you will receive a recorded version once available after class.*

About the instructor:
Saundra Mitchell is an award-winning author, screenwriter and editor, whose works include ALL THE THINGS WE DO IN THE DARK (Indiana Authors Award Winner,) the ALL OUT anthology series, and short films including Dear George, 24 Hour Service, and Kissing the Dog-Faced Boy. She lives in Johnson County, with her wife, daughter, and two naughty cats.