Fiction Book Club

Over the past several summers, The BTS Center has hosted conversations with thought leaders and our community focused on various works of fiction. As our Fiction Book Club initiative expands to include a specialized newsletter and other events as well as our annual summer series, we invite you to join us in our explorations of imagination and possibility through the lens of fiction.

Why fiction?

Simply put, fiction has the potential to reveal present realities and imagine possible futures. Through truth-telling, a good story confronts the current systems of power, the unequal material conditions, or the overwhelming circumstances that prevent all life from flourishing. It gives voice to whomever or whatever has been silenced, forgotten, or ignored — the lives of marginalized humans and exploited nonhumans, the values or perspectives that advocate for collective good, or the complex emotions that humans may experience during planetary polycrisis.

Why a book club?

Reading fiction together is a dynamic way for humans to make sense of the world(s) in which we live. By coming together to discuss these books, we also collectively share the weightiness of the subjects. Readers may find the book club to be a space where they can encounter fictional worlds, exercise their imaginative capacities, and even explore and experience their own emotions through the narrative lens of fiction. The Fiction Book Club’s collective format encourages everybody to reconnect with themselves, with community, with earth, and with the divine. 

Why you?

In response to the cries of the earth and the cries of the poor, the task for spiritual leaders today is to press deeper into the power and potential of storytelling. Storytelling is meaning-making — the way we make sense of life, truth, and beauty. There is no greater witness to the depth and diversity of such narrative power than the sacred texts and oral traditions of religions, spiritualities, and indigenous traditions across the world. They attempt to say something about realities beyond the grasp of human language: the divine or sacred, love and community, life and death, morality and justice, and so on. Many sacred texts and oral traditions teach us that, when faced with enormous obstacles, the pathways toward healing and transformation begin by stepping into a story that is larger than our circumstances. Guiding our communities through climate change is no different. We hope that our Fiction Book Club offerings will be a valuable exercise of your moral and ecological capacities for spiritual care in a climate-changed world.