Roy Scranton
{{short description|American poet}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=April 2016}}
{{Infobox person
| honorific_prefix =
| name = Roy Scranton
| birth_date = {{Birth year and age|1976}}
| image = Rs image.jpg
| education = The New School (MA)
Princeton University (PhD)
| website = {{url|royscranton.com}}
}}
Roy Scranton (born 1976){{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/opinion/sunday/star-wars-and-the-fantasy-of-american-violence.html|title='Star Wars' and the Fantasy of American Violence|last=Scranton|first=Roy|work=The New York Times|date=2016-07-02|access-date=2017-11-23}} is an American writer of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.{{Cite web|url=http://www.royscranton.com|title=caribou|website=www.royscranton.com|access-date=2016-04-08}} His essays, journalism, short fiction, and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Nation, Dissent, LIT, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Boston Review. His first book, Learning to Die in the Anthropocene was published by City Lights.{{Cite web|url=http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100064510&fa=author&person_id=17213#content|title=Learning to Die in the Anthropocene, Reflections on the End of a Civilization (Roy Scranton)|website=www.citylights.com|language=EN|access-date=2016-04-08}} His novel War Porn was released by Soho Press in August 2016.{{Cite web|url=http://sohopress.com/books/war-porn/|title=War Porn {{!}} Soho Press|website=sohopress.com|access-date=2016-04-08}} It was called "One of the best and most disturbing war novels in years" by Sam Sacks in The Wall Street Journal.{{Cite web|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/inverting-the-war-novel-1469826253|title=Inverting the War Novel|last=Sacks|first=Sam|work=Wall Street Journal|date=2016-07-29|access-date=2016-08-28}} He co-edited Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War.{{cite web|url=http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2014/07/29/scranton-baghdad-iraq|title=Iraq War Vet Returns To A Broken Country|last=Ashlock|first=Alex|work=WBUR-FM|date=2014-07-29|access-date=2016-06-05}}{{Cite magazine|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/135730/finally-realistic-iraq-war-novel|title=Finally, a Realistic Iraq War Novel|magazine=The New Republic|access-date=2018-08-10|language=en-US}} He currently teaches at the University of Notre Dame, where he is the director of the Environmental Humanities Initiative.{{Cite web|url=http://english.nd.edu/people/faculty/scranton/|title=University of Notre Dame Faculty Page|access-date=2016-08-28}}{{Cite web|title=EHUM|url=https://sites.nd.edu/ehum/|website=University of Notre Dame}}
Honors
Roy Scranton won the Theresa A. White Literary Award for short fiction 2009, received a Mrs. Giles G. Whiting Fellowship in the Humanities in 2014, and was awarded a Lannan Literary Fellowship in 2017.{{Cite web|url=https://lannan.org/literary/detail/roy-scranton-1/literary-award|title=Lannan Foundation|website=Lannan Foundation|language=en-us|access-date=2017-11-29}} His New York Times essay “Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene” was selected for The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014, and his essay “The Terror of the New” was selected as a notable essay in Best American Essays 2015. In 2021–2022, Roy Scranton was a fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Studies.{{Cite web|last=University of Notre Dame|first=Marketing Communications: Web|title=The Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study launches teaching lab to support large-course innovation // Institute for Advanced Study // University of Notre Dame|url=https://ndias.nd.edu/news-publications/news/the-notre-dame-institute-for-advanced-study-launches-teaching-lab-to-support-large-course-innovation/|access-date=2021-07-26|website=Institute for Advanced Study|language=en}} In 2024, Scranton was named a Guggenheim fellow.{{Cite web |title=John Simon Guggenheim Foundation 2024 Fellows Announcement| url=https://www.gf.org/announcements/|website=Guggenheim Foundation|language=en}}
Reception
Author Jeff VanderMeer wrote of Learning to Die in the Anthropocene, "It’s a powerful, useful, and ultimately hopeful book that more than any other I've read has the ability to change people's minds and create change."{{cite web|url=http://www.vulture.com/2016/01/28-authors-on-the-books-that-changed-their-lives.html?wpsrc=nymag|title=28 Authors on the Books That Changed Their Lives|last=Carroll|first=Tobias|work=Vulture.com|date=2016-01-05|access-date=2016-06-05}} Commenting on his bluntness, Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow of the Los Angeles Review of Books wrote, "There is something cathartic about his refusal to shy away from the full scope of our predicament."{{cite web|url=https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/impurity-two-books-on-the-anthropocene/|title=Impurity: Two Books on the Anthropocene|last=Tuhus-Dubrow|first=Rebecca|work=Los Angeles Review of Books|date=2015-11-30|access-date=2016-06-05}}
Historian Naomi Oreskes named Learning to Die in the Anthropocene one of the "five best books on the politics of climate change." She wrote, "I think he's fundamentally right about the essential point, which is that we have a tremendously difficult time assimilating just how serious this problem really is."{{Cite web|last=Oreskes|first=Naomi|title=The best books on The Politics of Climate Change|url=https://fivebooks.com/best-books/politics-of-climate-change-naomi-oreskes/|website=Five Books}}
In the book How to Blow Up a Pipeline,{{Cite book |last=Malm |first=Andreas |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1141142279 |title=How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire |date=January 5, 2021 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-83976-025-9 |location=London |oclc=1141142279}} author Andreas Malm criticized Scranton,{{Cite web|last=DeChristopher|first=Tim|author-link=Tim DeChristopher|date=February 16, 2021|title=In a World on Fire, Is Nonviolence Still an Option?|url=https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/ecological-civilization/2021/02/16/climate-is-nonviolence-still-an-option|access-date=2021-04-18|website=YES! Magazine|language=en-US}} stating that Scranton is united with other critics of climate activism by "a reification of despair"{{sfn|Malm|2021|p=141}} which Malm called "an eminently understandable emotional response to the crisis, but unserviceable as a response for a politics in it."{{sfn|Malm|2021|p=140}} He described Scranton's position as "climate fatalism",{{sfn|Malm|2021|p=140}} and stated that it is a self-fulfilling prophecy because "[the] more people who tell us that a radical reorientation is 'scarcely imaginable', the less imaginable it will be."{{sfn|Malm|2021|p=141}}
Works
- Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization. City Lights Publishers. 2016. {{ISBN|9780872866690}}
- War Porn. Soho Press. 2016. {{ISBN|9781616957155}}
- We're Doomed. Now What?: Essays on War and Climate Change. Soho Press. 2018. {{ISBN|978-1616959364}}{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/01/books/review-were-doomed-now-what-roy-scranton-infinite-resignation-eugene-thacker.html|title=Finding Alarm and Consolation About the Apocalypse in Two New Books|access-date=2018-08-10|language=en}}{{Cite news|url=https://www.thegazette.com/subject/life/books/doomsayer-or-realist-author-takes-on-climate-change-and-war-in-creative-nonfiction-essay-collection-20180707|title=Doomsayer or realist? Author takes on climate change and war in creative nonfiction essay collection|work=The Gazette|access-date=2018-08-10}}
- I Heart Oklahoma!. Soho Press. 2019. {{ISBN|978-1616959388}}
- Total Mobilization: World War II and American Literature. University of Chicago Press. 2019. {{ISBN|978-0226637310}}
References
{{reflist}}
External links
- {{Official website|http://royscranton.com}}
- [https://english.princeton.edu/graduate/futures/roy-scranton Roy Scranton] at Princeton University
- [http://blog.sierranevada.edu/sierranevadareview/2016/02/10/interview-with-roy-scranton-on-the-terror-of-the-new/ Interview] at Sierra Nevada College
- [https://www.npr.org/2013/11/11/244520706/in-fire-and-forget-vets-turned-writers-tell-their-war-stories Interview] at NPR
- [http://english.nd.edu/people/faculty/scranton/ Faculty Web Page] at University of Notre Dame
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Category:Princeton University alumni
Category:The New School alumni
Category:American male novelists
Category:21st-century American novelists
Category:21st-century American poets
Category:United States Army personnel of the Iraq War
Category:United States Army soldiers