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 author and anthologist Duncan Minshull for our April Salon, talking about his approach to writing, editing and compiling anthologies, including his recently published Where my feet fall.

WHERE CAN A WALK TAKE YOU?  We all have our own answers.  Setting out after a cramped hectic day indoors. Taking the weekend to hike to new views.  Meeting a friend and settling into matching strides.  Getting a feel for your new city on foot. It goes without saying, walking can connect us to our surroundings and free us from our worries. It can raise our heartrate and relax our minds. It can lead us across historic ground and inspire new thinking. Duncan Minshull has brought together 20 contemporary writers to write about a walk they remember or a walk they have undertaken during the pandemic:

‘I’ve always hated walking,’ Harland Miller offers as his precis, while Ingrid Persaud and Agnes Poirier consider the rituals of pilgrimage and protest march. ‘It isn’t a walking city,’ Kamila Shamsie writes of Karachi, though she strides across it regardless. On the shores of Foulness Island, Will Self hopes to avoid landmines. In a forest north of Berlin, Jessica J. Lee gets soaked, then lost. And pacing around Delhi, Keshava Guha is interrupted by a husky. ‘During the pandemic of 2020,’ he writes, looking back. ‘He was the only thing I hugged.’

Duncan Minshull was a senior producer at BBC Radio and now freelances in audio production. He also publishes books about walking, and these include While Wandering, Beneath My Feet, and Sauntering: Writers Walk Europe. 

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, 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.

Thanks to William Collins Publishers for making 2 e-book copies of Where My Feet Fall available as prizes. The book publishes on 31 March but you can pre-order hard cover copies at £18.99 from here

Hosts

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Duncan Minshull

 

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Andrew Stuck

Co-founder of walk · listen · create (United Kingdom)