David Restaino (KCL) - 2025-26 Students
david.restaino@kcl.ac.uk

Beneath the Waves our Light is Still Blue: Environmental Affect and Compressed Narratives in Flash Fiction

The practice-led project is a novel-in-flash comprising seventy-two fragments across four parts. Following an experimental cartographer trapped with an inn-keeper during a typhoon, the novel explores the intricate connection between personal and collective grief and environmental transformation. By utilising the compressed form of flash fiction, the project aims to capture the nuanced experience of climate catastrophe. Through the lens of environmental affect theory, Japanese poetic forms, and analysis of contemporary authors, the project aims to demonstrate how fragmented narrative structures can uniquely represent ecological loss and embody the temporal complexities of environmental change.

Principal Supervisor: Benjamin Wood