What can the planet’s past tell us about the future? How do we relate to nature when our bodies try to keep us from it? And how do you write about creatures that don’t wish to be found?
Join Wainwright Prize-nominated authors Sophie Yeo, Polly Atkin, and Chantal Lyons – host of this Salon and walk · listen · create’s Writer-in-Residence – as they explore the act of writing wild and wild-ish places into being when doing so may not be as simple as setting out for a long walk.
Yeo’s Nature’s Ghosts, Atkin’s Some of Us Just Fall and In the Company of Owls, and Lyons’ Groundbreakers each in their own ways seek to illuminate hidden realities. Each author has contended with challenges in writing about the natural world and our places in it, whether conjuring distant lands from afar amid a global pandemic, or weathering illness, or navigating stormy debates. Listen to them discuss their approaches, their tips (and, perhaps, their mistakes), their unexpected moments, and more.
Our guests invite you to compose a haiku on the Salon’s theme of writing wild and wild-ish places into being, follow our Bluesky account @walklistencreate and to skeet / post your haiku adding the #hashtag: #wlchaiku – closing date Sunday 5 January, 2025. Haikus will be discussed during the Salon, and one lucky haiku-ist will win a special prize*.
*A big thank you to the publishers of all four books, Bloomsbury Nature, Elliot & Thompson, Harper North, and Sceptre, from these three terrific authors, for the offer of their books as prizes.
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 may include a multiple choice quiz or other amusing challenge, in which a winner will receive a prize.
| Words to Light the Dark - hosted by Chantal Lyons |
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Groundbreakers: the return of Britain’s wild boar
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR CONSERVATION – HIGHLY COMMENDED ‘Full of joy, pathos, warmth, integrity and intrigue.’ AMY-JANE BEER‘One of the most notable works of recent nature writing.’ HELEN MACDONALD‘A thrilling expedition into a wild, unruly world.’ LEE SCHOFIELD ‘Gently thought-provoking and beautifully written.’ LEIF BERSWEDEN‘The remarkable story of Britain’s wild boar.’ THE GUARDIAN‘A real page-turner.’ STEPHEN MOSSAfter centuries of
• The Company of Owls
Share in the company of owls in this nocturnal love song… From the author of Some of Us Just Fall, longlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing. ‘I couldn’t put down this warm and comforting, beautiful book.’ Ajay Tegala, author of Wetland Diaries ___ In the woods above Polly Atkin’s home in Grasmere, Cumbria live the tawny
Some of Us Just Fall
‘Defiant and dazzling’Freya Bromley, author of The Tidal Year‘Essential reading’Jessica J. Lee, author of Turning‘It raises the standard of nature writing. This is both radical manifesto and activism in book form’Sally Huband, author of Sea Bean After years of unexplained health problems, Polly Atkin’s perception of her body was rendered fluid and disjointed. When she was finally diagnosed
Nature’s Ghosts: the world we lost and how to bring it back
For thousands of years, humans have been the architects of the natural world. Our activities have permanently altered the environment – for good and for bad. In Nature’s Ghosts, award-winning journalist Sophie Yeo examines how the planet would have looked before humans scrubbed away its diversity: from landscapes carved out by megafauna to the primeval forests
Words to Light the Dark – hosted by Chantal Lyons
What can the planet’s past tell us about the future? How do we relate to nature when our bodies try to keep us from it? And how do you write about creatures that don’t wish to be found? Join Wainwright Prize-nominated authors Sophie Yeo, Polly Atkin, and Chantal Lyons – host of this Salon and walk · listen · create’s Writer-in-Residence – as they explore the
• +1 Words to Light the Dark: Writing the worlds of other animals
How do we bridge the experiential gap between that of humans and other animals with writing that feels intelligible to us, while reaching for the differences in how other animals sense, think, and act? Join Chantal Lyons author of Groundbreakers: the return of Britain’s Wild Boar and our story writer-in-residence as she hosts Emma Geen,
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• Walking the blue and the green
We welcome back Martyn Howe as a Walking Writers Salon guest to celebrate his new book The Coast is Our Compass. Why are we drawn to a place where the land meets the sea? And what deeper truths emerge when these instincts come together in a journey around England’s shoreline? The Coast is Our Compass
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• Beneath the Dreaming Spires
Five years in the making, A Certain Logic of Expectations is a surprising, intriguing photo narrative of a well-known university-dominated city, created by Mexican photographer Arturo Soto. Soto studied at Oxford as a doctoral student, traversing the city incognito, capturing the quirkiness of British suburbia, a counter-narrative to the tourism blurbs that often quote Victorian
• • Walking towards a home in Greece
When author Julian Hoffman first arrived in Greece’s remote Prespa region, his Greek was “almost non-existent.” Walking became a form of literacy for him—a way to learn the language of the land by tracing the steps of others, reading stone walls, abandoned houses, plant communities, and animal tracks. “Walking was a way in,” he says,
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A 100 day Walk across Europe with a Wolf for company
Conservation policies across Europe have been encouraging ‘re-wilding’ of landscapes, including the re-introduction for animals that once roamed more freely. Scientists have been tracking such re-introductions, and back in 2011, a wolf left its family pack in Slovenia, crossed the Alps and journeyed across Europe for thousands of kilometres. Critically-acclaimed and celebrated travel writer Adam
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