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Articles by Zoe Young

Zoe Young (she/her) is based in San Francisco, where she serves as head of creative content for The Nature Conservancy in California and teaches playwriting and screenwriting at Berkeley City College. You can read more of her fiction in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern and Identity Theory Magazine. She is currently at work on a novel. Find her at ZoeYoungHere.com.

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Imagine 2200, Grist’s climate fiction contest, celebrates stories that offer vivid, hope-filled, diverse visions of climate progress. Discover all the 2024 winners. Or sign up for email updates to get new stories in your inbox.

I knew what the paper said before I read it. They pin the evictions to the house, but the agriculture notices go on the barn. 

The kid saw it first. I’ve been paying him to mind the irrigation lines in the orchard now that my legs are talking back. He burst through the door like a bullet train. 

“There’s paper,” he said, “real paper on the barn door.” 

I’d been expecting it for years — decades — but when it finally happened it somehow didn’t make sense. I was at the kitchen table, and I just stared down into my empty mug at the little salmon painted on the bottom. 

“How much paper?” I asked. The kid didn’t know how to answer. I tapped the cup on the table and a spray of black cof... Read more