SUNY Geneseo’s Walter Harding Lecture 2025
Author Jeff VanderMeer’s insights into writing and society
Photo courtesy of SouthernNights/Wikimedia Commons
On Sept. 24, 2025, SUNY Geneseo welcomed acclaimed eco-fiction author Jeff VanderMeer to the college for the annual installment of the Walter Harding lecture series. This discussion opened up to a wide ranging series of ecologically infused stories, life-learned lessons, and words of advice for aspiring writers. The theme of this conversation centered around what the author called the “strength of fiction,” making “the invisible visible.” While this is a frequently discussed notion within many spheres of Creative Writing, VanderMeer urged that “Instead, we must make what we know known” through mixing the natural world and absurd.
According to the Geneseo website, the Harding lecture series is a means of “honor[ing] the life and legacy of SUNY Distinguished Professor of English Walter Harding (1917–1996) ...made possible through the generous support of the Harding family.” This has been a tradition within the English and Creative Writing Department since 2004 and brought with it a wide variety of speakers (more on which can be found here). This lecture is meant to bring together individuals of multiple disciplines for the common purpose of enriching conversation, made possible through highly accomplished guest speakers.
This year’s annual conversation was begun by Dr. Ken Cooper, who introduced Jeff VanderMeer with a listing of some of his various accolades, just a few include his reception of the 2016 Nebula Award, the success of his various book series like Borne and the Southern Reach series (Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance, and Absolution), the creation of various adaptations of his works, and other impressive recognitions. This author is one that was not here to simply give advice, as various audience members attested—he was here to share his Florida-scarred perspective with a group of like-minded people, and that he did.
Following Dr. Cooper’s introduction, Jeff VanderMeer took the stage and began a heartfelt conversation focused on re-instating and petitioning for the natural order—and not in the way one would assume. What follows does not capture the substance of the lecture in its entirety, but rather those segments and talking points which I, personally, found most engaging.
One piece of advice I really admired, directed at writers present—regardless of genre or level of professionalism—was to make what is considered not fit for narrative, what the general public views as overdone or absurd, fit. He encouraged those present to condone your own choices, your own view of the world, and guide your viewers to a similar understanding, even if it’s one not thought of before. VanderMeer followed this up with an incredibly introspective question: “If we have no agency, how can we give our characters agency?”
VanderMeer also talked about the harmful effects of rugged individualism in fiction and nonfiction, focusing on how it muddies both human and earthly history through imprinting man every step of the natural way. He spoke of the yearning we have for a natural order long gone—a beckoning to an old world no longer reachable. Through this conversation, he offered guidance on how we can remedy this void forged by human nature: we, as creative writers, must conjure up the natural where the natural has been forsaken—where humanity has irrevocably scarred nature.
Yet, in doing so, he also cautioned against what our fellow man has done with creative writing: pollute it with human action, and hope that it becomes too polluted, too undrinkable for us to continue creating. How we, as man, have altered reality, altered the natural order; how we have tried to ascribe meaning where none may be— “life is indeterminate…endings may or may not have sense”;and how so many times we conflate ourselves with our earthly home. He punctuated these ideas with the simple phrase: “With or without us, the world will always know more than us.”
Nevertheless, VanderMeer hammered in the point that we, as readers, writers, and, most importantly, people, always have another path forward. We must forge our ways through that which has been foreclosed or deemed irrelevant; we must go forward, creating pieces that are informed by our lived experience, not just the fabrications of man. In his most keen point, he stressed the necessity of writing about what, even if not personal, lives in our bodies; we must write that which is true to our beings, and deny the wants of man from further muddying the natural order.
Though there are countless other points that could be mentioned in this piece, what you should do is look at the work of Jeff VanderMeer—either the adaptations of his works like Annihilation (2018) or his plethora of publications, my favorite being Borne. Likewise, if these pieces or this conversation sparked interest in you, talk to the staff in the English and Creative Writing Department, as they are always willing and eager to engage with any ideas that students bring to them!