Bending The Arc publishes stories, poems and features that bend the arc of the possible towards a thriving future on Earth. As a subscriber to Bending The Arc you’ll receive new, thrutopian work directly to your inbox for a fortnight twice a year.
The editors Laura Baggaley, Ilse Pedler, Katherine Stansfield, Hilary Watson & Alice Willitts are writers from different corners of the United Kingdom – we are poets, novelists, essayists, storytellers. We have a shared belief that better futures are achievable, and that imagination is the key to igniting change.
Our current writing practices are thrutopian. We tackle the dark and difficult challenges of the present day in a spirit of stubborn optimism. Our aim is to write thriving, desirable futures into being.
We followed Manda Scott’s (self-study) Thrutopian Masterclass. Each week for six months, we heard from changemakers and practitioners in a range of disciplines and discussed how we might incorporate these lessons into our own thinking. It was a crash course in practical, concrete information, covering (to name just a few) net positive cities, regenerative business practices, alternative political structures, new currencies, circular economies, renewable energy projects, new employment models, theatre collectives, sustainable agriculture, heroic myths, sociocracy, ecological civilisations...
We were inspired!
We learnt that there isn’t just one path to a positive, liveable future. There are many. But the path we’re currently on isn’t one of them. Change is urgently needed. The human race needs to act differently, to live differently, which necessitates changes in thinking, but it’s hard to make things happen when you haven’t yet imagined what’s possible.
Thrutopian writing imagines ways through to a world we could live in and be glad to leave to future generations. It tells stories about tangible change and walks us along the challenging path from here and now to a hopeful, liveable tomorrow. It accepts unpredictability and upheaval as foundational to the times that we’re living in, but doesn't dwell in that fear.
We agree with Jim Dator that “any useful statement about the future should at first seem ridiculous”. We dare to be absurdly hopeful.
Our aim is to inspire writers far and wide to explore thrutopian ideas in their own work, so that readers everywhere can have their own imaginations ignited towards what’s possible, and what’s desirable for tomorrow.
We hope to start an avalanche of possibilities, not to be unique ice crystals working alone. May our magazine be the start of something bigger – for now, we showcase bending the arc of the possible.
Subscribe to receive our magazine and writing tips, comment on posts, access the publication archives and hear about call outs for submissions.
As a subscriber to Bending The Arc you’ll receive new, thrutopian work directly to your inbox only for the specified fortnight of the edition. We aim to let the magazine grow organically and will start with two editions this year.
Participate
Thrutopian thinking is new, it’s a growing movement and we’re delighted you’re part of it as readers and writers. To create something, we first have to imagine it. And so we’re imagining as hard as we can – believable, alternative, functioning, sustainable, loving versions of our society.
Participate in the comments section, support this work by subscribing and sharing, and please write for the magazine, we’d love to read your work.
About the Editors
Laura Baggaley is a London-based theatremaker, teacher and writer of fiction for young adults. Her first thrutopian story – an eco-romance novella called Dirt – is published by Habitat Press. www.laurabaggaley.co.uk
Ilse Pedler is a poet and veterinary surgeon. She moved to the Lake District in 2020 and perhaps inevitably writes more about landscape than animals these days. She is particularly interested in rewilding and other local projects and how we can heal the environment we live in. https://ilsepedler.com/
Katherine Stansfield is a poet and fiction writer, one half of the writing partnership D. K. Fields. Originally from Cornwall, Katherine now lives in Cardiff. She is writing a novel set in the city which charts a thrutopian course through flooding.
Hilary Watson is a poet from South Wales. She’s a graduate from the University of Warwick Writing Programme. Hilary was an Arvon/Jerwood mentee under Caroline Bird. She’s been published widely in magazines. She works in the third sector and spends free time on her allotment or the Pembrokeshire coastal path.
Alice Willitts is a poet and plantswoman from the Fens. Editor of DIRT plantable poetry, creator of The 57 Poetry Collective, co-founder of On The Verge Cambridge. www.alicewillittspoet.uk
