Tricking the Troll: A Conversation with Berit Ellingsen on the Anthropocene and Literature

Abstract

This conversation brought together Berit Ellingsen, the acclaimed writer of novels, short stories, non-fiction pieces, and video game criticism and fiction, with Andrew Hageman, a scholar who researches and teaches intersections of techno-culture and ecology. Ellingsen’s recent novel, Not Dark Yet (2015), has established her as an ascendant figure in the world of speculative, perhaps “weird,” fiction, and Jeff VanderMeer has praised it in his list of favorite book reads of 2015 as a significant contribution to fiction that engages the strangeness of coming to consciousness of climate change, referring to the novel as, “An ambiguous and luminous and mysterious text that changes shape and meaning on rereading, as with all the best fiction.” What follows is a conversation that unfolded over several conversational sessions spanning the Northern hemispheric late summer and autumn of 2016, as Andrew experienced the prolonged flooding of his basement in Northeast Iowa due to unusually high rainfalls, as well as the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States. Their conversation reflects on and engages with this emerging world of strange weather and strange days to articulate the roles of literature and the arts in the Anthropocene.