Climate Utopias Writing Incubator

Embodied Earth is excited to work with creative writer, Chyna Cassell, to establish the inaugural Climate Utopias Writing Incubator (CUWI). Since 2025, Cassell has collaborated with Embodied Earth (EE) to host climate fiction writing workshops, grounded in the works of Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, encouraging participants to radically reimagine new ecological worlds using fiction. The next step in addressing our community’s needs is CUWI, facilitated in collaboration with EE.

CUWI bridges the gap between the imagined and the tangible, and brings writers directly to their source: the land that feeds their local community. We will partner with Bed-Stuy’s Central Bainbridge Community Garden and 462 Halsey Community Farms to host four climate writing intensives to a cohort of 15 Bed-Stuy writers.

In each session, the cohort will partake in a gardening workshop for one hour, learning about the soil, crops, and gardening practices from seasoned garden stewards. We will commission meditation, improvisational movement, yoga, and massage practitioners from the Bed-Stuy community to lead 30-minute activations to ground participants in their bodies, environment, and creative practices. Finally, I will co-facilitate a writing workshop with EE for one hour. We will provide guiding questions exploring themes of food justice, soil, and communal regeneration as inspired by the community gardens. The program culminates with a public reading and communal meal prepared by local Black food chefs at BEM Books in Bed-Stuy.

Today, community gardens face challenges including aging stewards, volunteer burnout, and a mandate to remain open to the public at least 20 hours a week. Our incubator addresses these challenges by enhancing garden programming to attract a new class of stewards. The first of its kind, the incubator offers a platform, site of inspiration, reprieve, rest, and wellness. Artists will have the opportunity to learn about food sovereignty and garden practices while having an intentional space to develop and expand their creative practices. This project will strengthen and link creative and food sovereign ecosystems within Bedford-Stuyvesant.