January 13 2026
Ep 38: On today’s Elaine’s Literary Salon show, meet the authors behind the poweful book, “Fire and Under Water — A Climate Change Crime Fiction Anthology”
About the interview:Today’s video podcast led by Elaine’s Literary Salon Host Jeffrey James Higgins icludes Puja Guha, Zakariah Johnson, Curtis Ippolito, and Michael Downing.
Meet Puja Guha on Sunday, Jan. 18 at Elaine’s Literary Salon where she will talk about the anthology and her other novels. Get your free ticket on Eventbrite! More details can be found about Puja and this amazing event at elainesliterarysalon.com.
About the anthology: Our world is changing dramatically before our eyes. Increased average global temperatures have wreaked havoc on ecosystems, economies, and people’s lives. Fires rage. Flood waters rise. Storms and heat waves are occurring out-of-season and are becoming increasingly more dangerous and more frequent.
Author Puja Guha
Neighborhoods are being destroyed. People are losing their lives and livelihoods. Still, some politicians, some pundits, and some corporate oligarchs continue to deny reality and refuse to take responsibility and necessary action to mitigate this existential crisis.
Those who did the least to cause this crisis will suffer the most from its consequences, the authors know.
In On Fire and Under Water, the new crime fiction anthology from Rock and a Hard Place Press, we explore the intersection of climate change and crime, through the lens of fifteen short stories from some of today’s best crime fiction writers. Edited by Anthony Award-winning author Curtis Ippolito and the editorial team at RHP Press, the stories contained within this anthology peel back the curtain on the ways in which climate change impacts real people in their most desperate hour.
Meet today’s panel of authors: Host Jeffrey James Higgins interviews Puja Guha, Zakariah Johnson, Curtis Ippolito, and Michael Downing
Some say the world will end in fire. Some say flood. In On Fire and Under Water, you get both.
This anthology peels back the curtain on how climate change impacts real people in their most desperate hour. Puja Guha’s story The Devil Doesn’t Live Hand to Mouth showcases this desperation as her protagonist loses everything to a massive storm in Mozambique.
Of the anthology, Jordan Harper, author of She Rides Shotgun and Everybody Knows, says: “Raw, brutal, tender, tragic—these are fifteen stories of people smashed flat by the Invisible Fist, people flailing and fighting against the huge and hidden violence at the center of our world. This is crime fiction that matters, crime fiction that is ready to face what comes next.”
Meet the authors: C.W. Blackwell, Mary Thorson, Zakariah Johnson, Puja Guha, Colin Brightwell, Priscilla Paton, Christian Emecheta, Raymond J. Brash, Edward Barnfield, Kendall Brunson, Michael Downing, C.E. McKenna, Jim Ruland, Richie Narvaez, Meagan Lucas
About our Elaine’s Literary Salon Host 
And meet the PR Director for Elaine’s Literary Salon, InkandescentPR.com’s founder, Hope Katz Gibbs. With her team of award-winning journalists, illustrators and video producers, they help writers up their PR and marketing game with professionally produced podcasts on 
