Writing During the Apocalypse: Reflections on the Great Unraveling
(Hardback)
Available Formats
Publishing Details
Writing During the Apocalypse: Reflections on the Great Unraveling
By (Author) Ed Simon
Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Bloomsbury Publishing USA
5th February 2026
United States
Classifications
Professional and Scholarly
Non Fiction
Literary studies: from c 2000
Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers
Comparative literature
Physical Properties
Hardback
208
Width 140mm, Height 216mm
Description
All of American literature is a tragedy. What were living through now isnt a tragedy, however its a horror novel. Why bother writing when the worlds on fire
Rising authoritarianism. Covid. Inflation. Wealth disparity. War. Climate change. While every time period is marked by apocalyptic fears, it certainly seems like our current anxieties arent ill placed. And yet, art and literature persist.
In captivating and culturally savvy prose, Ed Simon grapples with the notion that writers and their work ought to distract readers from the dire situation we face in these fetid days of the Anthropocene. He also addresses the wider question of what it's like to write during what could be the last decades of human civilization, arguing that to craft imaginative spaces through the magic of words isnt superfluous. Instead it exists at the core of human experience as it always has and always will.
Examining creativity as it has manifested in similarly dire circumstances in human history in a broad range of authors and texts, such as the Bible, Boccaccios Decameron, Voltaire, Octavia Butlers Parable of the Sower, and Stephen Kings The Stand Writing During the Apocalypse eschews the easy defeatism of nihilism. Instead, it offers a hopeful perspective on the various ways that literary expression can endow a meaningless world with meaning and generate a spark in the darkness.
With the infamous four horsemen as its guide, Writing During the Apocalypse honors the literary life even during the end of the world.
Author Bio
Ed Simon is Public Humanities Special Faculty in the English Department of Carnegie Mellon University, USA, a staff writer for Literary Hub, and the editor of Belt Magazine. A widely published author, his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New Republic, and The Paris Review, among dozens of others. Author of over a dozen books, his Devils Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain was included in the Best Books of 2024 by The New Yorker.
