It’s time for thrutopian world-building. // Thank you so f💋ckin much to everyone who made this past Friday night and the journey with “Cabbage Koora” so overwhelmingly special. Y’all are precious to me! Biiiiig love to @reparations.club for hosting, @intersectionalenvironmentalist for partnering, and @diandramarizet and @greengirlleah for your brilliant minds in a beautiful guided discussion. And of course a hugeee thank you to @grist and @ghostdiamond and @milkweed_books for including me in this incredible anthology. Metamorphosis: Climate Fiction for a Better Future is out now — link in bio to grab your copy. (We have a handful of signed copies remaining from the event that you can purchase through the same link!)
Shoutout to @rahdrip for the iconic shirt 🙆🏾♀️ and to @brittslegit for literally making me cabbage koora. 👩🏽🍳 And to all the sweet friends not pictured, whose presence and support means the world. ✨
New project coming in hot. Introducing GARMI. 🔥🌶️
Subscribe on good ol’ Substack to stay tuned for what all the above buzzwords mean to me. (link 👏🏽 in 👏🏽 bio 👏🏽)
🎨 immaculate design by @divya_nayar
📸 by @aditinramesh
@cbc What On Earth invited me on to talk about “thrutopia,” a term coined by @rupertread that’s all about how we get from here where we are to ✨there✨ where we want to be. The messiness, the humanity, the longing and learning and building. I situate my work — both my nonfiction at GARMI and my speculative climate fiction — through the lens of thrutopia.
In this episode, in conversation with What On Earth host Laura Lynch and Lucy Stone (founder of @climate__spring ), we chitchatted about why we’re drawn to thrutopian storytelling, what it can help us achieve, how we even do it, how it relates to the continued resilience and imaginations of colonized communities, and how we can use it to catalyze a world that works for us all.
Check out the episode at LIB!
#thrutopia #climatefiction #GARMI #climatestorytelling #speculativefiction
This Earth Day, we’re celebrating one year of our “beautiful diss track”: “HEATED (GARMI).” Goodbye Mr. So Slick and hello healthy futures. 🌏✨❤️🔥 Get heated with us: listen to the song on your go-to music platform! To decode the lyrics, take action, and learn more, visit garmi.studio/heated.
“HEATED (GARMI)” is a project by @garmi.studio@anusha.savi@sanj___ , performed by @anusha.savi , written & produced with @wicks____ & @itsaleczeilon . Full credits for our incredible team at the link above!
Thank you to all the lovely humans in this video: @vivxtran_@archana.wav@awokenlotus@kiramrob@saaandyrose (+ if you’re in this and we don’t have your handle, DM us so we can tag you!)
And a shoutout to @polluterspay & @theclimatepropagandist for partnering with us on the “HEATED” storytelling ecosystem. 🤓
#HEATED #earthday #breakupsong #justtransition #makepolluterspay
I just made up this phrase because I think that’s what I’m writing? Especially over at GARMI on Substack. What do you think? Is GARMI “civic smut”? What do you think of when you hear the phrase “civic smut”? Somebody tell me if I’m onto something. 👇🏽
This is what book research looks like 🤓✍🏽📚
Last month in Kochi and Hyderabad, the two cities entwined in my DNA, I read and read and read. I wandered. I absorbed. I experienced. I payed attention to my senses.
Research is such a precious part of writing. I went to India this time with a fervent hunger to learn, to meander the labyrinths of my curiosity, to immerse in the subaltern voices and gorgeous resistance work in the places that I’m from. In bookstores and libraries and archives and exhibits abroad, I always find perspectives that are excluded from American mainstream knowledge. Reading when I travel expands me. And as I write GARMI, as I work on my book proposal(s) 🌝, as I world-build towards a manuscript, research helps me navigate not only what I write but also the current moment in which we live.
James Baldwin said, “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.”
Swipe to the end to see the 17 books I carted back with me from India. 🙈
Welcome back to another episode of Cooking With Friends. This time I’m in the kitchen with my friend Sanjana Sekhar, and we leaned fully into an aphrodisiac menu designed to awaken the senses and liven things up. On the table were oysters with strawberry mignonette, a silky maca pot de crème topped with whipped cream and pistachios, and a saffron ginger chili mocktail meant to linger long after the last sip.
Across cultures, certain foods have long been associated with desire and vitality. Oysters for their mineral richness and connection to libido, strawberries for their sweetness and heart opening symbolism, maca for energy and hormonal balance, pistachios for circulation and warmth, saffron for its mood lifting qualities, and chocolate and chili for their ability to increase blood flow and spark sensation. None of it feels accidental. These ingredients have been reaching across history, linking nourishment with pleasure for centuries.
Cooking with Sanjana felt playful and intentional, the kind of energy that makes you slow down and enjoy the moment. This is, as Sanjana says — Pleasure politics, the idea that desire and pleasure are political. Longing is shaped by culture, by power, by the futures we imagine. This sensory menu activates our collective lust for a future where care is abundant, food feels joyful, and systems nourish us all.
To build that world, we have to *want* it — so ignite your desire with us, one bite at a time.
Original Soundtrack is titled: HEATED - a project by @sanj____@anusha.savi@garmi.studio
