Author, editor and musician Allister Thompson Credit: Photo supplied by Allister Thompson
Today, I’m speaking with author, editor and musician, Allister Thompson whose cli-fi novel, Birch and Jay, officially launches on May 24, 2025!
Allister was born in the United Kingdom and spent his childhood in Mississauga, ON, where he got his first part-time job in a small bookstore at the mall at age sixteen. Allister has spent the rest of his life working in the publishing and bookselling industries. Initially, he worked for small and mid-sized Toronto publishers for 15 years while also touring with a rock band and releasing dozens of psychedelic rock, progressive rock, folk and ambient albums. Allister then struck out on his own becoming a freelance editor and eventually moved to North Bay, ON, where he has lived and worked with dozens of authors over the past ten years.
Allister’s first novel, The Music of the Spheres (2021), was an alternative history sci-fi novel. His cli-fi novel, Birch and Jay, contains important messages of hope and how to care for a post-apocalyptic Mother Earth.
Cli-fi, or "climate fiction," explores the impacts of climate change on society and Mother Earth. Cli-fi writing often depicts the world and its inhabitants dealing with the consequences of anthropogenic climate change — climate change caused by human activity — as well as other environmental issues.
Book cover for Birch and Jay. Credit: Photo supplied by Allister Thompson
Birch and Jay is set decades after the world has been levelled by the effects of human-made climate change. Jay, a newly graduated Knowledge Seeker, leaves his small town community in the north to collect remnants of old wisdom from the “dead world.” Eventually, Birch pursues Jay encountering more danger than she could ever imagine.
But this is not a novel about climate change. Instead, it focuses on the political and social changes caused by climate change. Allister and I discuss how oppression of poor and marginalized folks increases when the public becomes fearful – even desperate – and looks to strong men to save them.
As a musician and author, Allister is disappointed with today’s fractured media landscape and the fact that protest art doesn’t have the same impact it once had. He shares his views on why it’s important for artists to produce forthright and uncompromising pieces of art that push back against descent into authoritarian madness. Birch and Jay is Allister’s way of pushing back as a novelist.
As a white CIS author, Allister was careful to be inclusive in his characterizations. We discuss the elephant in the literary room and how he addressed it in his writing.
Birch and Jay is a cautionary tale of the violent dystopic future we face if we don’t swap our hyper-consumptive, wasteful, elitist lifestyles for egalitarian integrated ways of living that respect Mother Earth and the web of life.
In particular, Allister set this young adult fiction in Ontario, and for readers who may not live in that province, Birch and Jay foreshadows the potential fallout from the Ford government’s drive to destroy knowledge, nature and marginalized folks.
Yet, Birch and Jay inspires hope while embracing apolitical, anti-political, inclusive and powerful love. All of that makes Birch and Jay the perfect novel for English teachers and parents to get teens to read.
Birch and Jay is the first book in a planned trilogy and listeners can order advance copies from Latitude 46 Publishing before the official book launch being held at the North Bay Library at 1 pm on Saturday, May 24, 2025.
Find Allister Thompson on:
The Gateless Gate — music by Allister Thompson
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Music: Real Estate by UNIVERSFIELD is licensed under a Attribution 4.0 International License. freemusicarchive.org.
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