Every month I send out a sample of my current writing, whatever I am working on, or have just published–always hopeful, sometimes draft. Subscribe or read them below. As a writer and professor-for-hire, you can also ask me to write something for you bespoke.

2026

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July

'Energy' (extract from new open access book)


In many years yet to come there will be an island in the North Sea, designed by an aging archaeologist called Miriam.

There she is, striding along a frozen gravel footpath, down the spine of the little round island in her warning orange waterproofs and balaclava. She looks a lot like an astronaut, except she walks with a tall staff, pressing against the wind, her other hand deep in her pocket.

She grips a precious stone pebble. In its silicon bonds are stored the final digital remains of the world’s first on-grid wave energy converter, Pelamis the sea snake.3 No one wanted to keep the industrial wonder of the machine’s twisting metal hulk–its almost 200-meter-long yellow skin and 1300 tonne body–so it was melted down for scrap. In Miriam’s stone is all the data it generated: its renewable energy, its blueprints, its digital twin, and a poem by a forgotten ethnographer. The data had been stored in a museum server drawer, until now. 

Now it is time to let the legendary wave machine go, and to grieve its loss.

Miriam walks because she believes in choice, in letting some pasts become just an oral story—passed on from person to person rather than using up energy in a server farm. She knows that storing data takes energy, land and water. She has been spurned for her heresy; for insisting on the possibility of a good death for digital things. She has her principles for a good digital death: dignity, care, and sustainability. And so she presses on as the evening wind begins to ease and the first bright pinhead of a planet begins to shine.

She is almost at the end of the island, almost at the copper dome that sits on a grass rise, its curve blurred in a clouded North Sea sky; her destination: the data crematoria.

The data crematoria is where data and its energy go to die. It looks like an old-fashioned observatory, from back when telescopes had mirrors to look at the night. Its servers and workings are buried in the ground beneath, and its power comes in through seaweed-covered cables on the beach, the electricity drawn from wind and wave turbines in the sea all around.

Miriam knocks at the metal entrance to the dome, and the heavy rust-spotted door swings open. The crematoria technician smiles a warm welcome from within her black quilted overalls and motions Miriam into the wind-free corridor. 

The door shuts on the silent passage, and Miriam takes a moment for her eyes to adjust to the red strip lighting.

Together, the old archaeologist and the technician walk in the dim red light to the antechamber. 

There Miriam is surprised to find that the long, familiar wall is covered in a huge tapestry, beautifully woven abstract art made of blue, green and turquoise squares, like some giant, coloured QR code. 

“A local weaver downloaded the Pelamis data,” explains the technician. “They found some words and images from the engineers, and they wove this.” The technician stops and lets Miriam feel the data embroidery filling the wall.

“This is what’s left of the sea snake,” the technicians says, quiet.

Miriam runs her fingers down the silken threads. The tapestry will be the final material remains of the world’s first wave energy generator. It seems fitting to Miriam that it will hang here, on a North Sea island powered by wave energy. 


This is an extract of the just-published short story ‘Energy’ in the open access book Predictions (Volume 1): From Speculative Ethnography to Apocalyptic Testimony, edited by Mél Hogan, Stefan Laser, Edward Ongweso Jr., and Brown Hollis, published by Mattering Press. The whole book contains fantastic predictions from great friends and colleagues from Cymene Howe to Anne Pasek to Estrid Sørensen, the list goes on!

June

Permabits podcast: Interview with the author of the manifesto for Fair Trade Energy
(extract)


Dawn: Welcome to Permabits, a podcast for perma-computing. You might have heard about the Atlantis Manifesto, which sets out some interesting principles for fair and federated energy systems. Green power is one of the foundations of permacomputing, so today we’re interviewing Charlie Bevan who wrote that manifesto. She lives on an island in the North Sea at the heart of a new energy system, an island which is–unexpectedly for an island in the North Sea–called Atlantis. So, Charlie, for those of us who don't know what Atlantis is, tell us a little bit about your island, and how it inspired the manifesto.

Charlie: Thank you for the invitation, Dawn. Atlantis is an artificial energy island in the centre of the North Sea. We were built by the European Union to manage the gigawatts of renewable energy being generated from its offshore wind turbines. There are thousands of wind farms in the North Sea but the wind is intermittent–sometimes it blows, sometimes it doesn’t–and people want electricity at completely different times. Demand does not align with generation. So we were designed to switch North Sea wind energy to a national grid where there is demand–from Norway to the Netherlands–or to store wind energy when nobody wants it. We manage North Sea electricity so that when you put your kettle or computer on in this part of the world, you will get wind energy even if the wind isn't blowing. 

My main job is to help balance the European grid by shifting energy in time and space. So Atlantis has grid batteries, hydrogen electrolysers, and even data centres, all of which transform energy from one form into another: electrical energy into hydrogen or data, for example. 

But I have another job because we are an island community, too, with our own energy needs. Atlantis has its own electricity network to keep our home and office lights on, to keep our geodesic greenhouses irrigated, and our lighthouse beacon flashing out over the fog. We have electric bikes and home batteries and servers and hot water tanks, which all need power. I think it's important for your listeners to know this: my neighbours, they come first. The island community has to come first because we are precarious. We are a hundred or so people living out here on a lump of concrete and sand in the middle of the North Sea. Our kids are here. This is our home. We are going to stay. But it’s not easy.

So there are two energy systems on Atlantis. We make different choices about how we distribute and manage our island energy amongst ourselves, compared to the choices we make to manage the gigawatts of hyperscale wind energy that flow through us. We don’t govern Europe’s energy. But we do govern our own energy. So we can–and we do–give our energy away for free if we choose. We made a set of principles to help us make decisions about what’s best for us. Those principles were the first step towards the Atlantis Manifesto.

Dawn: The Atlantis Manifesto talks about trading energy between places. You talked just now about the difference between the European energy system and the island’s energy system. These all have different limits, different system boundaries. We talk a lot about limits in our permacomputing community. One limit that we’ve experimented with is what you call behind-the-meter, where the limit of the energy network is the electricity meter. We might put up solar panels and servers that are linked together around the world to run a solar-powered website, for example. That’s about exchanging data. But what we don't do is think about exchanging energy, which is what the Atlantis Manifesto seems to be about. Can you explain that to me, and our listeners, where the limits are in your system? Is it an exchange between different local energy systems, like behind-the-meter? Or is it like exchanging energy with a single central company, or one per country? How far and wide do you go?

Charlie: Well, we are a grid, so we don't get involved in anything behind your electricity meter, like the projects you mentioned. Electricity grids also stop at the end of their grid cables, and we don’t have electricity cables sending power around the planet because it’s physically not sensible–you lose too much en route. There are no transatlantic electricity cables like there are internet cables. We can just about manage cables across the North Sea. Electricity grids are regions. They are always regional-scale, whether that be a country or an island of a hundred people. I'm an energy nerd so that’s the scale I always think in: regions, and sometimes those regions become communities. Here on Atlantis the island is the limit. Islands are handy like that: it’s always obvious where your limit is.


This sample is from a workshop paper written with Dawn Nafus, Federated Fair Trade Energy: Speculative Fabulation for a Planet with Limits, LIMITS 2026 (12th Workshop on Computing within Limits) 23-25 June. Join the online workshop to hear more...

May

Zine futures: Going solarpunk with paper
(extract)


Here is my solarpunk zine. It’s folded into a boat. After this talk I am going to the canal outside to let it sail on the water, to where and whom it will. Why? What? This is what I will answer in the next half hour.
 
I call it a solarpunk fanzine, and that is for two reasons: it has solarpunk form, and solarpunk content.
 
A solarpunk fanzine takes the material form, and format, that it needs so it can do “science-fiction-as-activism”, so it can embody an “age of sail aesthetic”.* Solarpunk zine formats “kick over the anthills”. That form is different from what it was in the past. The format of fanzines started as photocopied, staple-bound, zines, because there were limits to the average photocopier and what could fit into a standard envelope. They cut and pasted because they were working with whatever photos and images they could lay their hands on.
 
Future zines face different limits. Where are they? Where are the ant hills to kick over? What physical and online forms are needed to do “science-fiction-as-activism”?
 
I’ve done anti-powerpoint risograph booklets. I’ve done floating mailboats. I’ve done folding paper games. I’ve done handwritten poems on dotmatrix paper (it was the longest bit of paper I had at the time). I’ve told you about the solar powered Low Tech Magazine... the potential for a solar-powered web and a solar protocol.** And now I’ve made a solarpunk fanzine as a paper boat. These are forms that were necessary to the do the work they had to do–to act, to resist, to kick over the anthills that were there, then. Sometimes they require the reader to do more than read. Sometimes they require the reader to participate, to act, to fold, to play, to turn the page. Solarpunk fanzines are not passive objects. They are objects that invite action and making the world not just otherwise but brighter.
 
This solarpunk fanzine is a single sheet of A4 paper because that’s still the standard size for printing in this part of the world, and all my home printer can do. I’ve folded it into a boat because I am inviting the reader to literally manifest an age-of-sail aesthetic, because I am embodying the knowledge that we are all islanders on this ocean earth, and that I can send a mailboat with a message across the planet. The mailboat may get picked up in the canal or it might dissolve, its pieces disperse in the ocean. [..] A solarpunk fanzine does not have to embody utopia just be a guide and thoughtful provocation towards getting there. That defines the form it has to take. […]
 
This fanzine is part of a solarpunk world. This sheet of paper is hope that is possible, about sustainable lives that can be lived,  
 
If you let it, perhaps it can take you there, perhaps you can sail to this future? Let’s sail…


References
* Quotes from the Solarpunk Manifesto: The Solarpunk Community. n.d. 'A Solarpunk Manifesto (English)'. ReDes – Regenerative Design. Accessed 19 March 2025. https://www.re-des.org/es/a-solarpunk-manifesto/
** https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/
** Brain, Tega, Nathanson, Alex, and Piantella, Benedetta. 2022. 'Solar Protocol: Exploring Energy-Centered Design'. Paper presented at LIMITS 2022. Eighth Workshop on Computing within Limits 2022. https://computingwithinlimits.org/2022/papers/limits22-final-Brain.pdf

This sample is from my performance and presentation, which I turned into a fanzine and set sail on the canal, at 'Making Zines in the Anthropocene' workshop at Center for Sustainable Futures, University of Copenhagen, April 2026. You can read a digital version of the whole fanzine here.

April

Legitimate Salvage
by Laura Watts
March 2026


“Get that connection up!” Yelled Katja as she braced against her seat, squeezed amidship with the other hackers. How were they supposed to manage the ad hoc energy and data networks for a dozen communities in this? The storm kept knocking out their mesh signal.

The bow dropped and Katja glanced at the bucket wedged on the floor, more for reassurance than genuine seasickness. She focused on the local electricity grid she was managing for a North Sea town in Scotland. It was December, and the town had voted to give out free energy to everyone. Katja was determined to make that happen. No-one was getting cold on her watch.

“Box 359 is shrink-wrapped and ready,” announced Alex, sitting at the end of their workbench, his voice loud in her headset. 

He had the easy job, Katja reflected. All he had to do was ready the salvaged data centers that were sitting up top, on deck, in their rusting cargo containers. He could get personal with his rack equipment if he really wanted to. Well, until they salvaged the array of underwater data centers that had been abandoned in that Scottish loch next week. Then he’d need a diving suit.

Data Shepherd had a clear and practical mission as an organisation: salvage the data center containers that had been abandoned in the sea–or just dumped on shore, if the decommissioning companies got away with it. Data Shepherd claimed the unwanted kit, with its forever plastics and toxic metals. They sailed out in their adapted offshore vessel to grab whatever they could and to stop the e-waste from leaking into the marine ecosystem. Then they, the hacker team, got in there and repurposed the data servers and put them to good use. Legitimate salvage. What could be more legitimate than running community data services? Katja’s expertise was electricity grid software. 

The connection popped back and Katja sent her code to the little data center they had donated to run the town’s microgrid. Then she switched screens and read the SCADA data that squirted in from the onshore wind turbines, which the town had been stuck with after the dash-for-data collapsed. 

White foam splattered the small portal next to her. The wind must have shifted. The ship began to corkscrew as it rode the swell and Katja grimaced, sipped her sweet tea, but refused to be distracted.

The wind was dropping for the turbines near the town, too, so she needed to activate the thermal heaters to keep everyone warm. 

The collapse of the dash-for-data building frenzy had left a bizarre over-proportioned electricity grid as well as abandoned data centers. One was supposed to feed the other. Towns and communities had been left with unwanted ‘bit barns’ on their doorstep, and a landscape and seascape filled with renewable energy farms gone dark–along with their energy companies. Data Shepherd was salvaging both, thought Katja. And then plugging them together. Because, really, there was no such thing as too much green electricity: it kept people warm and fed. It was all legitimate salvage.


This microfiction Legitimate Salvage was written for Anne Pasek's zine for the conference, Before Ruins, Ruhr University Bochum. She wanted a speculative future of the ruins left behind after the 'AI bubble' pops and what that might mean for local communities. As soon as the zine is available to download and print I will add a link.

March

The dark skies at night mean I can watch Andromeda, 2.5 million Light Years away and a ghostly cloud near Pegasus, the winged horse. Excessive light is not needed. We listen and watch with our ears. We do not fear the dark. We are from the stars–we are star stuff, and know it. We all look up at the same stars. Humanity is bound together by the night, Earth's night. Who knew it was the stars, not the Sun, that would hold our future.


Sample from impromptu writing for the public event 'Towards 2100: Imagining a future without fossil fuels' organised by Amber Nordholm and Tomas Moe Skjølsvold, NTNU, Trondheim. Everyone was invited to write a postcard from the year 2100 about what life is like... (I happened to have a postcard handy to write on...)

Actual postcard that I sent from the year 2100...

February

Kara waved at the white table and gestured me to sit. I chose the least uncomfortable looking chair, the one with the least bent legs, and sat in genuine pleasure, pulling off my heavy jacket. She reached down to a cardboard box on the floor, and pulled out two not-entirely-clean tumblers, along with a bottle of 18 Year Highland Park whisky, which instantly made me grin and give marginally less of a care about who she was–and what this place was. If she was the kind of person that could produce a decent bottle of whisky out of a cardboard box, then she and I were going to get on famously. (It's a pretty high bribery bar, that's stuff’s not cheap.)

She dropped into one of the other assorted chairs, wobbled for a moment, and with a practiced kick, shoved a paper wedge under the offending, missing chair foot. I nodded my acknowledgement of her skill. The chairs must have been rejects from the Heritage Centre. They were old and well-used, for sure. 

Kara leaned back, tripped her feet up on another chair and poured two drams. We raised our glasses, two islanders toasting the new year. 

“Skål!” We both said, together. 

I blinked, surprised at her. That was my line, borrowed from my Scandinavian friends. No matter. 

I stretched my spine, leaned back, and enjoyed being out of the haar. I had no idea where I was, no idea who I was with. But my companion was an islander, and one with whom I did not have to navigate twenty years of history and family feuds. At least, not yet. All I had to do was let the whisky coat my cold bones with honey.

The imagined servos under my face stopped whirring, my hard smile was gone, and I felt a dreamy blankness roll over my features like a calm sea. My eyes rested on Kara, her head back, enjoying her dram, unconcerned with me. She seemed older now, or more ageless.

On my now calm face, I felt the dimpling of stars, twinkling in my cheeks. 

"I don't know what this is.” I waved at the building. "But it's great – I can feel it’s great.” 

And I could. The building felt right. It felt like it belonged here. I felt right. I felt like I belonged here.

Kara nodded. “It took a bit to get the data centre here. Someone, I won't say who, of course, practically sailed off in protest. I'll not get any tea from that house.” (House? Haus? Hoose? I could not get her accent.) “But if we can do energy, then we can do data, right? It's all just cables and poles. All just the same stuff.”

“Absolutely!” I toasted her. 


Sample from a work-in-progress, a revised version of 'Datahowe: Speculative fable of a data centre under the hill' for an edited book on Speculative Ethnography (being edited by Kathrin Eitel and Chakad Ojani).

Read the first version published in 'Orkney Cloud' magazine.

January

An electricity atlas would have pages or layers of information relating to a geographic region. The carbon intensity of electricity and other data used in power-purchase agreements would be transformed into related, perhaps overlayed, pages. [...] 

We can speculate on five more livable futures that might result from data industries living with such an unflat electricity atlas. [...]

A) A data center operator wants to reduce their carbon emissions and considers investing in a North Sea offshore wind farm. They look at the electricity atlas and learn that there are risks due to a lack of local grid reinforcement and public concerns around the siting of substations in peatland, which is important for both carbon sequestration and wildlife. 

The operator looks at the resource map and notes the massive potential for tide energy up the coast, where a local organization has uploaded a report on a tide energy array that has planning permission. Therefore, the data center operator makes an investment to support the popular tide energy array, not in the delayed offshore wind farm. This supports the future of a precarious coastal community.

B) An urban data center operator is considering how to upgrade its backup power, which is a diesel generator. They want to reduce their carbon footprint but have limited space. 

They look at the electricity atlas and discover there is a local energy company that represents houses and businesses in the city who have formed an energy community.1 They have home batteries, solar panels, electric car charges, and thermal storage, which they balance among themselves and from which they sell electricity to the grid. 

The urban data center contracts this local organization to provide their backup power and forms a long-term, trusting relationship with them.


Sample from my latest journal article with Julia Velkova ‘From Flatlands to Livable Futures: Unflattening Carbon Metrics in the Energy and Data Industries' published in Big Data & Society 12 (4). doi.org/10.1177/20539517251396074. 

Read the full article (open access).

References
1. Chemnitz NØ, Bonnet P, Büttrich S, et al. (2021) Unionized data governance in virtual power plants. In: Proceedings of the Twelfth ACM International Conference on Future Energy Systems. New York: ACM, 282–283.