KINGSTON, R.I. – March 13, 2026 – On Thursday, April 2, the University of Rhode Island Metcalf Institute will host a conversation with Meera Subramanian, award-winning environmental journalist and a 2012 Metcalf alum, about her new book, A Better World Is Possible: Global Youth Confront the Climate Crisis, which was created in collaboration with New York Times bestselling illustrator Danica Novgorodoff. Subramanian will be in conversation with Metcalf 2015 alum Elizabeth Rush, author of The Quickening: Antarctica, Motherhood, and Cultivating Hope in a Warming World.
Climate anxiety doesn’t discriminate by age, and Subramanian’s book shows how young people are grappling with it. Through text and illustration, A Better World Is Possible conveys stories of action and hope in the form of four youth activists who have witnessed the effects of climate change up close — from wildfires in the Pacific Northwest to floods in Bangladesh — and come together to help organize the world’s largest climate protest. All ages can learn something from this young adult graphic novel.
“Throughout A Better World, there are interludes where we pause the storytelling and drop in the science, to make it more accessible,” Subramanian said in an interview with Metcalf. “We go through what fossil fuels are and what extreme weather events are. What is environmental justice? What does religion have to do with it? It gets into the misinformation and disinformation campaigns that have happened. The end interlude is about solutions, so you come out with all the things that can be done right now.”
Subramanian’s work has appeared in publications such as Nature, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Orion, where she is a contributing editor, and her first book, A River Runs Again: India’s Natural World in Crisis, was short-listed for the 2016 Orion Book Award. She writes narrative nonfiction about home in the personal and planetary sense, in a time of climate crisis.
“Climate change can feel intimidating, and I think that’s a lot of the reason why people of all ages are less engaged,” Subramanian said. “It feels really important to try to bridge that divide. And that’s what Metcalf Institute is all about. How do we teach scientists and journalists to communicate all this stuff that’s going on that, we admit, can be complicated? Storytelling, of course, is the way to do that.”
Rush lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and teaches creative nonfiction at Brown University. Her book, Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Orion, Guernica, and others.
Both Subramanian and Rush participated in Metcalf Institute’s Climate Change Seminars for Journalists in 2015, and Subramanian was a 2012 fellow in Metcalf’s signature Annual Science Immersion Workshop for Journalists, which returns for its 28th year this June. “Thanks to the Metcalf fellowship, I was able to connect directly to many of the scientists and scholars whose work provides the backbone of the stories that I write. It also gifted me a community of like-minded writers,” Rush shared. Subramanian added, “Metcalf is a chance for journalists to get their hands dirty and fill their heads with enough science to fuel infinite stories.”
Co-sponsored by URI’s Harrington School of Communication and Media, the Department of English and Creative Writing, the Environmental Arts and Humanities program, the Environmental Education program, and the College of Arts and Sciences. With special thanks to ecoRI, the free and open-to-the-public event launches Metcalf’s 2026 Annual Public Lecture Series. It will take place at the University of Rhode Island’s Kingston campus in the Hope Room of the Higgins Welcome Center. Join us for a reception at 5:30 p.m., followed by the conversation at 6 p.m. Books will be available for purchase and author signing. Registrationis encouraged for in-person attendees and required to receive the livestream link. Learn more at URI’s Metcalf Institute website.