Finncon is happy to announce the Academic Guest of Honor for this year’s event will be Marek Oziewicz, the Professor of Literacy Education and Children’s and Young Adult Literature at the University of Minnesota.
His current research concerns the Anthropocene as a challenge to our story systems and on the transformative power of literature for young readers. He is particularly interested in ways speculative genres assist young readers in the formation of global consciousness built on inclusiveness and equality.
Oziewicz serves as Director of the Center for Climate Literacy whose mission is to promote universal climate literacy education as a means to transition to an ecological civilization. He is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Center’s flagship project Climate Lit: a resource hub for building young people’s climate literacy with literature, film, and stories in other media. His recent publications include a special issue of The Lion and the Unicorn on Children’s Literature and Climate Change (2021, co-edited with Lara Saguisag), and a collection Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene (2021, co-edited with Brian Attebery and Tereza Dedinová).
