Laura Toms, Author at Writers Rebel

Reclaiming DartmoorWyl Mnmuir

Laura Toms — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 09:25:13 +0000

The walk had started cheerfully enough. We gathered in the village square, formed a polite circle and introduced ourselves. Many of those who turned up already knew one another, veterans of the Right to Roam campaign. Many had been involved in organizing the protests that had taken place earlier in the year against [...]

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My Damascus MomentNick O'Neill

Laura Toms — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 14:21:49 +0000

The shrieking of the young woman covered in fake blood had a visceral effect on me. She’s the same age as my daughter I thought, as the TV presenter thrust her microphone into my face. Like spectators in a Roman amphitheatre watching cowering Christians, the crowd of protesters pushed forward expectantly as if sensing [...]

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Free Paul WatsonForfattere ser Grønt

Laura Toms — Fri, 06 Sep 2024 10:24:29 +0000

On 21 July, the whale activist Paul Watson docked to refuel his ship, the John Paul DeJoira, in Nuuk, Greenland. And in response, Denmark – of which Greenland is a part – did something morally incomprehensible. It ordered police to arrest and detain him. What was his crime? Watson, the former Greenpeace activist [...]

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Air as Sweet as Ice CreamShahnaz Habib

Laura Toms — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 11:51:57 +0000

“You have to be very lucky to see a snake,” Sam said to me. “They are shy.” I was pulling on long gum boots to wear for a hike in the forest. Sam is the resident guide at a small guesthouse, set deep inside a forest in Wayanad, in the northern hills of Kerala. [...]

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Briefly Very BeautifulRoz Dineen

Laura Toms — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 07:01:00 +0000

She knew that there were other parents in the streets nearby silently planning their terror runs, just like her, just then. This was reassuring, like a superstition, or a community. Hot magic-blue night. She said, ‘Whisper.’ ‘What if I’m scared?’ whispered Vito, who was eight. ‘Of the insects, maybe?’ ‘There is nothing to be [...]

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Q&A with Roz DineenLiz Jensen and Natasha Walter

Laura Toms — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 07:00:56 +0000

Briefly Very Beautiful, set in the near future in a country that is never named as Britain, involves some bold world-building choices. Which of these were the easiest to make, and which the hardest? Those choices were quite straightforward. I was drawing logical conclusions from existing conditions. If this, then this. If fire, then [...]

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Paddling PoolClaire Carroll

Laura Toms — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 07:00:18 +0000

It’s not unethical to buy one, despite what some people say. Sure, there’s too much plastic in the world, too much material, too many petrochemicals, but no one has told us definitively that it’s not OK. They would have banned them, anyway. It’s completely fine if you want to walk to the hypermarket to [...]

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The Pressure ZoneDavina Quinlivan

Laura Toms — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 07:00:20 +0000

All these images, I cannot shelter from, as one might shelter from the rain. They fall and fall, and fall and fall, in perfect, perfect liquid lines. Things go, they burn out brightly, they reach the surface of my mind. The weather, the people, at the edges, bordering what goes on between and behind. [...]

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You Can’t Kill the MessageAmber Massie-Blomfield

Laura Toms — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 22:04:31 +0000

We marched, that day, towards the Houses of Parliament, leaving the square outside the Tate Britain and forming a procession along the Thames. Someone had brought branches to the protest, green and freshly coppiced from a managed wood, and we held them aloft like we were extras from Macbeth, converging on Dunsinane. As a line of [...]

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