Britt Wray

“In this intriguing and engaging work, Britt Wray shows that addressing global climate change begins with attending to the climate within.”

—Dr. Gabor Maté, Bestselling Author of In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts

Britt Wray is a ground-breaking researcher and storyteller, and a growing voice around the mental health effects of climate change. She’s the Director of CIRCLE (Community-minded Interventions for Resilience, Climate Leadership and Emotional wellbeing) at Stanford Psychiatry in the Stanford School of Medicine. She draws on rigorous investigation and insightful interviews with therapists, activists and researchers to make the scientific case for embracing our climate crisis emotions—especially the ones we’d prefer to ignore. When we heal ourselves through community and open communication, we’ll be better equipped to heal the planet.

Britt’s acclaimed book Generation Dread, about finding purpose during the climate crisis, is an honest, profoundly compelling exploration of our climate-related stresses and “a road map out from under the burden of environmental chaos, made all the more compelling by the way it tracks her own journey” (Macleans). It was named a finalist for the 2022 Governor General’s Literary Awards. In Generation Dread, Britt takes a candid look at the many ways our “eco-distress” pushes us into a state of grief, numbness or fatalism, and how it makes us burn out and question big life decisions like whether to have children. But she doesn’t leave us in our anxiety. She reveals how the very grief that pains us can also mobilize and transform us, and how emphasizing support and community will help us protect our planet and its inhabitants. David Wallace-Wells, the New York Times bestselling author of The Uninhabitable Earth, calls Generation Dread “a marvelous exploration of the divergent, sometimes paradoxical, but always human ways in which we navigate the effects of climate change.”

She is the creator of the weekly climate newsletter “Gen Dread,” about staying sane in the climate crisis. A highly in-demand speaker, she’s given talks at TED and the World Economic Forum alongside the likes of Jane Goodall, Al Gore, Yuval Noah Harari, Johan Rockström, and Ban Ki Moon. As a science communicator, she has hosted several podcasts, radio and TV programs with the BBC, NPR, and CBC, and is a Chicago Council on Global Affairs Next Generation Climate Changemaker.

Britt is the recipient of the 2023 Canadian Eco-Hero Award and top award winner of the National Academies Eric and Wendy Schmidt Awards for Excellence in Science Communications, given by The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Her previous book, Rise of the Necrofauna, was described as a “must-read” by The Sunday Times, and The New Yorker called it one of the best books of the year. She has a PhD in Science Communication from the University of Copenhagen, and is an advisor to the Good Energy Project for climate storytelling and the Climate Mental Health Network.