Meet the authors who are writing about walking and the landscapes through which we walk, at walk · listen · create’s Walking Writers Salons. We are delighted to have biologist and award-winning nature writer David George Haskell join us in October, talking about “Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic marvels, Evolution’s Creativity and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction” in which he explores the origins of song, music and speech across all species.

We live on a planet alive with song, music, and speech. David George Haskell explores how these wonders came to be. In rainforests shimmering with insect sounds and swamps pulsing with frog calls we learn about evolution’s creative powers. From birds in the Rocky Mountains and on the streets of Paris, we discover how animals learn their songs and adapt to new environments. Below the waves, we hear our kinship to beings as different as snapping shrimp, toadfish, and whales. In the startlingly divergent sonic vibes of the animals of different continents, we experience the legacies of plate tectonics, the deep history of animals and their movements around the world, and the quirks of aesthetic evolution.

Walking Writers Salons are hour-long events in which you will get to meet a Walking Writer and learn from them how they weave writing and walking, and how they interpret their surroundings. Each Salon will include a discussion with the author led by Andrew Stuck, inviting questions from the audience, and will include a multiple choice quiz in which winners will receive prizes including print copies of WALKING (RRP €4.50) and WALKING HOME (RRP €4.99) our own limited edition illustrated chapbook anthologies of poems and prose.

We are grateful to Faber & Faber, UK publishers of Sounds, Wild & Broken for providing two e-book editions as prizes in our multiple choice quiz.