The Future of Climate Change in the Berkshires

A talk by David Guenette, author of Kill Well and Dear Josephine

Wednesday, September 24, 2025, 6:00 p.m., at David and Joyce Milne Public Library,
1095 Main St, Williamstown, MA

 

David Guenette is the author of The Steep Climes Quartet, a literary climate fiction series, with the first two books Kill Well (Fall 2023) and Dear Josephine (Spring 2025) now published. Book Three, Over Brooklyn Hills, will publish in Spring 2026, and Book Four, Farm to Me, in Winter 2026.

 

The series centers on Berkshire County, Massachusetts, spanning across four books from 2026, 2029, 2035, and 2047, respectively. The series looks at how most of us experience climate change, and it’s not extreme disaster as much as it is ongoing economic stress, political upheaval, and social anxiety. We’ll remain exposed to climate change mostly from the news, but with increasing personal interaction with it, whether battling higher electricity, food, or home insurance bills, or in more frequent contact with extreme weather events. These deviations—some fast, others more gradual—change household economy, business, and cultural conditions even as national and international situations shift. As the world continues to warm, the chance of catastrophe in our own corner of the world may remain modest for a time, but the actions we take today and tomorrow will make future catastrophes either more manageable or beyond control. Climate change can seem outside the human scale, but we face important choices for the future of our nation and world—and children and grandchildren—that must be faced today.

The series has action and suspense, but even more importantly, characters with which readers can identify as the near- and mid-future of our region progresses.

The talk draws from decades-long research on the wide-ranging issues of climate change and presents what we will be facing in the years ahead from the human perspective of home, work, community, and heart.

David Guenette is a writer, climate activist, and blogger who has lived in the Berkshires—Housatonic and New Marlborough—for twenty years. His work is available through online and traditional bookstores, in ebook and paperback. For more information: www.davidguenette.com or https://milne.librarycalendar.com/event/climate-fiction-and-future-climate-change-berkshires-3718

Supported by: Mass Cultural Council and the Cultural Council of Northern Berkshire