Sand in the place where you live: Deb Olin Unferth’s ‘Earth 7’ is an indelible eco love story.

On this episode of Fully Booked, sponsored by Cambridge University Press, Deb Olin Unferth joins us to discuss her new novel, Earth 7 (Graywolf, June 2), “a quirky, bold, and endearing masterpiece of climate fiction” (starred review).

The acclaimed author of Barn 8 (2020) returns with a pensive, memorable novel set in a future universe after a mass decline in human population. Her characters are survivors who live under the sea, in swirling deserts, and among the stars—still possessing that all-too-human ability to fall in love.

Here’s a bit more from our review of Earth 7: “Unferth’s latest begins with a scientist named Rosemary Stein who’s taking her 5-year-old daughter [Dylan] to live under the sea in a settlement of acrylic pods.…Beyond miserable in her lonely childhood, Dylan eventually makes an online friend, Zee, who lives on Mars, ‘a descendant of one of the original Mars settlements,’ which turns out to be just one of the ways humans have fled their incinerated planet.…As Dylan schemes to have Zee rescue her from her apocalyptically boring life, Unferth’s prodigious worldbuilding unfolds magically to offer other possibilities.…[Their stories] unfold over vast vistas of time and space, profound, funny, alarming, and imbued with love and sorrow for our lost world.”

Unferth is the author of seven books, including the story collection Wait Till You See Me Danceand the memoir Revolution. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and four Pushcart Prizes and was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. Her work has appeared in Harper’s, The Paris Review, Granta, and McSweeney’s. She is a professor of creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches for the Michener Center for Writers and the New Writers Project.

Unferth and I explore the differences between speculative and science fiction, creating meaningful spaces in stories, and DIY writing retreats. She describes the book as an “eco love story,” and we discuss the concept of post-nature narratives. We talk about her research, including a significant investigation into the properties of sand; whether there’s such a thing as the perfect novel; the role philosophy plays in her life; and much more.

At the end of our interview, Unferth recommends to listeners two wildly different novels she loves. Follow @kirkus_reviews on Instagram, DM us the title of one of those novels, along with your email and location, and you’ll be entered in a drawing to receive a $100 Visa gift card, courtesy of Kirkus. The giveaway is open to legal residents of the U.S. who have reached 18 years of age or older at the time of entry.

THANKS TO OUR SPONSOR: 

The Elephants in the Room by Seth Masket (Cambridge University Press)

Fully Booked is produced by Jessica Lockhart and Megan Labrise.