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Award-winning writers including Lemn Sissay, Monique Roffey and Nikesh Shukla are among those participating in an event calling on major oil companies to cease fossil fuel production because of the climate crisis and its impact on people of colour.
Held as part of climate activist group Extinction Rebellion’s Week of Rebellion, which runs from 9th-17th April, "Big Oil is the Poison: Action is the Antidote" will feature speeches, performances and live readings from the writers. There will also be a spoken-word event with Tongue Fu, Hot Poets, and Writers Rebel, an activist literary group.
Other participating authors and poets at the Big Oil event on 14th April include Ali Smith, Inua Ellams, Raymond Antrobus, Patience Agbabi, Nikita Gill and Courttia Newland.
It begins at 4pm in London’s Jubilee Gardens outside the headquarters of Shell UK and will be introduced by Writers Rebel co-founder and author Liz Jensen.
The writers have been brought together by Roffey, another co-founder of the group, who has been outspoken in her condemnation of Big Oil, a term that covers BP, Chevron, Eni, ExxonMobil, Shell and Total.
“We have a small window of time left to act,” she said. “Direct action is the only answer to the massive damage fossil fuels do to our planet and have done over a hundred years or more. We must adapt to green energy and now. As writers, we must speak out, speak truth to power, amplify this message as best we can.”
Other performers include Joe Dunthorne, poets Dizraeli and Zena Edwards, author Alex Lockwood and novelist Sarah Winman.
Newland, co-writer of the BBC series "Small Axe" and author of A River Called Time (Canongate), said: “I’m involved because I feel like fossil fuels need to be a thing if the past. I grew up beside the A40 Westway [in London]. My kids go to school in one of the most polluted areas of east London. Reduced fossil fuels consumption, with the aim of making it zero, is the only way to combat the numerous ills they bring to the world. They are many other ways of making energy for ourselves—we only need to be prepared to make the sacrifice.”