June 2026: storytelling for a better world
Each month, we break down our topic into four weekly modules. Catch up on previous editions here.
This week's module: ACT
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Here's what we'll learn today Reader
Okay so remember a few months ago I told you NOT TO READ THIS EMAIL especially if you're my family?
We're doing that again, so please scroll on to the main content if we are related.
Today's REFLECT module wraps up our June topic on storytelling, and you'll have some creative options to reflect on solarpunk futures including a video game, sending a solarpunk postcard from the future to a friend, and a huge collaborative mural. After I sign off, I'll share a poem from an Indigenous poet about poetry/words (meta, right)?
But first, an announcement (nOT FOR MY FAMILY: YALL KEEP SCROLLING to "your bite sized action plan" ⬇️ ).
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Remember I told you I wrote a solarpunk romance novel? TODAY, WE ANNOUNCED THE COVER!!
Here it is! How timely that we get to see it during storytelling month, right?!?!
If you're interested in updates from Raveena, reply to this email! She is planning preorders and marketing and tour stuff in the next few weeks. (If you are my family and you reply, I will ignore you or fully block you thanks <3)
Alright, onward!
A lil note 💚
Hello hello! If you enjoy the work we're doing at Soapbox through these Changeletters and more, pleeeasse consider contributing. If you donate at our monthly tier of $28, you will also get you an invite to our membership community!
Love,
Nivi
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Your bite-sized action plan Reader
Your mission is to continue your storytelling journey by picking a reflective/creative medium!
Your options are game, postcard, mural, or poem.
- Game: There's a new videogame called Solarpunk! Check it out and report back on how it was to play it. I haven't played yet, but I've heard great things.
- Postcard: Jacob Coffin, whom I've been obsessed with for a while and thus pestered and now we're friends on Discord, has this awesome project called Postcards from a Solarpunk Future. Print one out and send it to your friend or... make you own via collage or photobash!
- Mural: Katie Patrick has made this wallpaper mural of an eco-city that you can get for any event (or your house? office?) and color it with your friends/family/coworkers TOGETHER! Have yourself a lil reflective treat while you imagine the future of your own city.
Poem: I'm going to sign off now and leave you with this poem. I'd love for you to think about this question: how does language affect what is and isn't possible?
Love,
Nivi (poem below)
K.yah | Saad: Toward an Open Poetics by Navajo Nation Poet Laureate Jake Skeets
In this essay, I will
— locate the land’s locution
— shimmer inside a word’s mineral
— make my home sentence twine
— turn possessives into antiquated vocabulary
In this essay, I will
leave this place —
the desert is no sea its glimmer only black rock
knelt at the skycase
a chimney of sun tar and asphalt
beneath the rake and roll of cactus and canyon seed
spring dew taunts tarantula and scorpion
parched in a midday temperature high
for springtime or late fall
In this essay,
the desert is a love letter
there is no sea
a desert undertow is thirst
its riptide a dust devil
fairy wind on the San Juan basin
the light casts its name in tarmac
swarm and memory
In this something other than essay
somewhere there is a fire
about to happen or is happening or has happened
In this I will
this is the high desert, i.e., a place with light
so much of it we forgot how to look
In this desert, I will
light the hardened meadow with a technology so ancient we call it language.
This is what I mean:
the field steps pink onto a hairline road
the sun washed on morning needle and wrestled sap
it was an early frost followed by late heat
there are no rules or boundaries out here
the trees at the tree line are only a border
if we say it is—the same goes for river or alcove
If the lights go off any one moment, would we fear
the darkness? In it, we can’t see the cornfields
empty of corn or weeds growing in the abandoned mine.
In this darkness, I will
write another love letter to winter and call it by its real name
language, after all, is the only sound it can hear
I will say I am from here, this desert, a home
I refuse to let a border town be my name
Where are you from, they’ll ask
Háadę́ę́’shą’ naniná?
Here, I’ll say. Everywhere.
A lil note 💚
Hello hello! If you enjoy the work we're doing at Soapbox through these Changeletters and more, pleeeasse consider contributing. This is how I make my livelihood and pay my rent (and my team!) and I would appreciate any support you can give. Thank you for being here!
Love,
Nivi
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