Professor Michelle Min Sterling Discusses Debut Novel on The Today Show
Michelle Min Sterling
Image by Benedicte Gyldenstierne Sehested
Michelle Min Sterling, assistant professor in Berklee's Liberal Arts and Sciences Department, appeared on NBC's The Today Show this morning to talk about her debut novel, Camp Zero.
Today cohost Jenna Bush Hager chose the book as her April 2023 Read with Jenna pick. “It is action-packed,” Hager said. “I read it so fast.”
Camp Zero is set in a dystopian near-future in remote northern Canada, where a team led by a visionary American architect is breaking ground on a building project called Camp Zero, intended to be the beginning of a new way of life. A clever and determined young woman code-named Rose is offered a chance to join the Blooms, a group hired to entertain the men in camp—but her real mission is to secretly monitor the mercurial architect in charge. Rose quickly secures the trust of her target, only to discover that everyone has a hidden agenda, and nothing is as it seems.
“It’s a propulsive read,” said Sterling on Today. “It’s a page turner. But it’s also about a relationship to the environment, and the need for collectivity to face a lot of our challenges.”
The novel falls into a genre now known as “cli-fi,” or climate fiction. “The genre allows the reader to have an empathetic relationship to the climate crisis we’re in right now. It provides a way for readers to see themselves to a certain extent and grapple with themselves in a way that feels visceral and intimate,” Sterling told Today.
Hager enjoyed the book’s multiple perspectives, which Sterling wove into a surprise finish. “The ending of this book is incredible,” Hager said.
Sterling teaches creative writing and literature at Berklee with a focus on utopian, dystopian, and post-apocalyptic narratives, as well as AAPI literature. She is the faculty advisor for the Asian Americans in Music and Entertainment Club (AAIME).
Sterling told the Today audience that the book was “a long time coming” and required a lot of work and revision. She was greeted on the show by one of her own writing teachers, Allegra Goodman, whom she credits with teaching her the skills she needed to complete the novel—“grit, tenacity, and determination.”
