Imagining Beyond the Trope

Appalachian literature is rich and powerful, but its gaze is often retrospective—fixated on a romanticized past or a gritty, traumatic present. Narratives of the future are largely absent or, when they appear, are uniformly dystopian, depicting a region further scarred by climate disaster and economic collapse. The NCIAF's Speculative Fabulation project seeks to fill this imaginative void. We commission and workshop short stories, novels, and graphic narratives that imagine Appalachian futures that are complex, hopeful, strange, and challenging. We ask writers: What does a *good* future here look like? Not a perfect one, but a viable, vibrant one?

Themes for a Future Canon

We encourage explorations of our institute's research themes: stories set in communities powered by minewater geothermal, featuring characters who are predictive forestry analysts or heritage algorithm coders. But we also seek the purely imaginative: tales of newly discovered cryptids in rewilded forests, of time slips connecting strike camps past and future, of first contact with an alien species that finds the folded topography and cultural complexity of Appalachia more relatable than the flat homogeneity of the metropolis. The goal is to expand the palette of possibilities, to create new myths and symbols for the region's path forward.

We run an annual retreat and writing prize, bringing together established Appalachian authors with emerging voices and futurists from other disciplines. The resulting works are published in an annual anthology and adapted into podcasts and immersive audio experiences. This is not propaganda for a techno-utopia; it is an exercise in narrative capacity building. By writing these futures, we make them more thinkable, more discussable, and therefore more achievable.

Why Fiction Matters for Futurology

Data and policy papers are essential, but they don't change hearts or fire the collective imagination. Fiction does. It allows us to live vicariously in a possible world, to feel its conflicts and joys, and to critically evaluate its desirability. A compelling story about a community navigating the ethics of geoengineering or the social tensions of a population influx of climate refugees can do more to shape public conversation than a dozen white papers.

Speculative Fabulation is, at its core, an act of radical hope. It asserts that Appalachia has a future worth imagining in detail, and that its people are not merely subjects of historical forces but active authors of what comes next. By building a library of possible futures, we give the region new stories to tell itself—stories that can guide, inspire, and warn as we collectively build the real tomorrow. The future is not just predicted; it is first written.