Lynn hutchinson lee on Sustainability
- Lisa
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
hosted by Nina Munteanu
July 15 2026 - 11
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The Sustainability thread is a thematic series of articles, curated by Canadian SF author Nina Munteanu and sponsored by Reality Skimming Press. Pieces in the series appear twice a month. Query Nina Munteanu about appearing on the thread at nina.sfgirl@gmail.com
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My guest today is Canadian artist and author Lynn Hutchinson Lee.
Interview with Lynn Hutchinson Lee
My guest today is Canadian artist and author Lynn Hutchinson Lee.
Lynn was winner of the 2022 Joy Kogawa Award for fiction. Her short fiction has been published in anthologies and magazines, among them Room, Weird Horror, Northern Nights, and Canadian Tales of Climate Change. Her 2026 novel Nightshade was shortlisted for the 2023 Guernica Prize.
M
My My guest today is Canadian artist and author Lynn Hutchinson Lee.
Nina: How would you define sustainability and what do you consider the key components to be sustained?
Lynn: "Sustainability, to me, is habitat preservation and habitat justice for all beings and elements of nature, from birds to fish, from mycelia to forests, amphibians to humans, streams to oceans, and so on. Habitat justice is the natural right for all to live and thrive in an environment that supports their respective needs for habitat and food security, clean air, clean water.
Nina: What does the phrase of our thread title "Sustainability Before Ambition" mean to you and how does it affect you: how you live, what you write?
Lynn: My community in downtown Toronto, Ontario, is under the foot of Ontario’s Conservative premier, who has a well-known historical resentment of my city, as well as a penchant for wildlife habitat destruction. As one example, at his orders, he had trees and animal habitat in a public park destroyed and the land sold to a private spa with a dubious reputation. Torontonians were outraged.
Facilitators for sustainable living here include cycling and environmental organizations, as well as local community groups.
Barriers for nations are by and large multinational and strictly profit-driven – I’m thinking here of Canadian mining companies in Guatemala and elsewhere with the reputation of destroying Indigenous communities, stealing their lands, and poisoning their rivers with toxic waste. This has been achieved through violence, and in the case of some Indigenous human rights and land defenders, killings.
Facilitators for sustainable living are global community groups – farming and other cooperatives working for food security. Outstanding among these is Vandana Shiva’s Navdanya (Earth University). From the website’s own words: “Navdanya is an Earth-centric, women-centric and farmer-led movement dedicated to protecting biological and cultural diversity. Guided by the philosophy of Earth Democracy, we see the world as One Earth Family (Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam), with no separation between humans and nature and no hierarchies between species, cultures, genders, races or faiths.”
Nina: What roles can individuals, corporations and governments play in ensuring sustainable living?
Lynn: As entities whose sole purpose is profit, it’s contradictory that corporations might play a legitimate role in ensuring sustainable living. I think it’s the role of governments to enact and enforce laws to protect vulnerable populations and all environments. This means, for example, choosing environment and its inhabitants over damaging resource extraction (mines, non-renewable resources such as petroleum, etc.); and investing heavily in renewable resources such as wind and solar energy. I remember people were told not to use paper straws, as if that would seriously affect pollution. Individuals have a much greater role to play by lobbying their members of parliament and exposing the dangers of unfettered privatised resource extraction.
Nina: Do you feel that authors can play a role in encouraging a sustainable lifestyle? Do any particular writing genres play a more substantial role in establishing a narrative of sustainability?
Lynn: Definitely authors can encourage a sustainable lifestyle! Eco-fiction with sub genres like eco-horror, eco-justice and climate fiction are foremost. I think of Rebecca Campbell’s The Other Shore and Arboreality (both from Stelliform Press) as ways of considering and balancing our present and future lives.
Nina: How was sustainability achieved (or not achieved) in a world that you (or another author) created? Was it inspired from a real example?
Lynn: Sustainability in my novella Origins of Desire in Orchid Fens (Stelliform Press) was inspired by direct action to respect and preserve an ecologically fragile orchid fen under threat of a mine expansion.
As far as the historic practice of the gold mine owners in Orchid’s community is concerned, sustainability was thrown to the winds due to the mine’s contamination of a small river, Nurses Creek. “The smell of that dead water. The ruination. Only a criminal would do this to a river. What if, as a punishment, you had to carry the smell of your crimes in your body? On your breath, your skin, your hair?”
However, the expansion into the orchid fen was curtailed by vengeful river spirits. “We’re armed with telepathic maledictions, and you’ll have no defense against them. ….orchids will grow teeth, and water snakes will feed you to their young. Bacteria will digest your crane lifts, your dragline excavators, your stackers and crushers. Leeches will become engorged on your bodies……The fen belongs to itself….. It is a force like no other. It has no mercy.”
The premise of Orchid embraces sustainability at an intimate level in the quality of life of the inhabitants of the mining town and its environs. Most of the townspeople – particularly the women – fight to preserve the ecologically fragile fen, seeing it as a life force enmeshed with and sustaining their own lives. We can see the mine owners as the embodiment of ‘ambition’ in their desire to sacrifice that same fen for monetary gain.
BIO: Artist and writer Lynn Hutchinson Lee lives in Toronto, Ontario. She was winner of the 2022 Joy Kogawa Award for Fiction. Her writing is published in Room; Weird Horror; Northern Nights; Prairie Fire’s 50 Over 50; Wagtail: The Roma Women’s Poetry Anthology; Fusion Fragment; Canadian Tales of Climate Change, Guernica’s This Will Only Take a Minute (winning the Editor’s Choice Award); and elsewhere. Along with Nina Munteanu, she is co-editor of Through the Portal: Tales from a Hopeful Dystopia. Her novella Origins of Desire in Orchid Fens is published by Stelliform Press, and her novel Nightshade (Assembly Press) was shortlisted for the Guernica Prize.
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Nina Munteanu is an Canadian ecologist, author, editor and writing coach, notably but not exclusively in the realm of Speculative Fiction (SF/F). In addition to nine published novels, Munteanu has written short stories, articles and non-fiction books, which have been translated into several languages throughout the world. Munteanu is a member of SF Canada.
Nina Munteanu on LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/ninamunteanu/
Nina Munteanu Writing Coach. https://ninamunteanu.me/
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