The marvellous Dame Emma Thompson gave a melancholy and mischievous call out to the Puffin for our On the Brink event when she found herself unable to “research puffins amidst the musty stacks” of the London Library “prevented by this latest lockdown.” She relies, instead on her “straggling and intermittent memory” to give us “everything […]
The real beauty of a coral reef is in the way it renews itself and creates the strongest of structures in the world with the most delicate of life forms. If the fragile polyps are damaged, the reef crumbles. You could say the same of us, and our world: that which is most fragile […]
What do we do when climate change threatens more than just a species and its habitat, but puts at risk thousands of years of relationships between land-based cultures and their most sacred plants? When Adla Massoud and her friends invited me to join them for a pilgrimage to the northernmost stands of Cedars of Lebanon […]
Read More… from Read: Sowing the Seeds of HopeGary Paul Nabhan
Tell us about what’s happening at Ardee bog, and why you are campaigning to stop it. Ardee Bog, in Ireland’s County Louth, is threatened by an absurd infrastructure project. If a proposed road, the N52 Ardee Bypass, is allowed to proceed in its current form it will cut through Ardee Bog and its […]
Read More… from Read: Trees breathe out. We breathe in.Katie Holten
Changing destructive policies is one of the biggest ways to halt the loss of habitats and exploitative practices that affect the most at-risk species on the planet. Writers Rebel and Extinction Rebellion are committed to holding governments to account to reverse the devastating losses to biodiversity that the Anthropocene has caused. If you’ve not yet […]
Read More… from ACT: Take a stand against extinctionOn the Brink: Support conservation missions
This year for Remembrance Day for Lost Species, November 30th, Writers Rebel are bringing together 20 writers from around the globe including Margaret Atwood, Amitav Ghosh, Elizabeth Kolbert, Ben Okri, Homero Aridjis and others to each tell the story of one animal. Please join us for this free landmark event. Below, Writers Rebel member Alex […]
Read More… from READ: They All Run TogetherJoin us for On the Brink: Mon 30th Nov, 7pm GMT
Who are the main people and organisations coming between the UK people and policy progress to address the climate and ecological emergency? Questions like this led Writers Rebel to organize an action in a quiet privileged street in the heart of the parliamentary district in London. The Writers Rebel action in Tufton Street: No More […]
Read More… from Listen: Where is the heart of climate denial in the UK?
M John Harrison is a much-celebrated multi-award winning veteran writer of science fiction and speculative fiction. He recently won the 2020 Goldsmiths/New Statesmen Award for The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again. Here, he talks to Writers Rebel co-founder, and writer Monique Roffey, whose novel The Mermaid of Black Conch was also shortlisted for the […]
Read More… from Read: Q&A with M John HarrisonMonique Roffey
‘The Romanticist’s Nightmare’ – An original poem accompanied by long lost historical archive footage of nature, contrasted with horrifying scenes of pollution, as a response to William Morris as a romanticist poet and proto-environmentalist during the time of the industrial revolution and the destruction of natural habitats and ecosystems. I have often thought about our responsibilities […]
Read More… from Watch: The Romanticists’ NightmareBrandon RA Pestano
Hau kea white snow, snow (Hawaiian) In this tropical archipelago, snow is most likely to be found on a simmering crater. In winter the temperature at the summits of Mauna Loa, Haleakala and Mauna Kea – the state’s three tallest volcanoes – drops to below freezing. Mauna Kea means ‘white mountain’ and it […]
Weather Gods I Tired of burnings, bulldozers, charred lungs, Chaac the Rain God decamps from Mayan rainforests, rides the bloated trade winds, comes to reign over the Old World. Days on end the swollen earth has swallowed till it’s soft as blotting-paper. The sun is an aspirin dissolving in a gauze of […]
There are a million species under threat of extinction throughout the world, with as many as two hundred disappearing every day. But amongst these there is one species whose passing we need not mourn: the Danish mink farmer. Even before Covid jumped the species barrier from humans to mink and back again, mutating into […]
Jimmy Piaguaje is a young indigenous Siekopai defender from Siekoya Remolino, a community of 53 families living on the banks of the Aguarico River in the northeastern Ecuadorian Amazon region. The Siekopai (which means multicoloured people) are renowned for their shamanic acumen and knowledge of medicinal plants, with uses for over 1,000 different plants. According […]
Read More… from Read: Hope in the Amazon: Interview with Jimmy Piaguaje
The following reading is from Ken Saro-Wiwa’s speech, which he was prevented from reading in court towards the end of his trial by the Military Tribunal, that sentenced him to death by hanging on October 31, 1995. It gives historical context to the justice-focused activism of communities of resistance in Nigeria, like the Movement for […]
Read More… from Watch: Esther Stanford-Xosei reading Ken Saro-Wiwa
Jimmy Piaguaje es un joven activista indígena Siekopai de Siekoya Remolino, una comunidad de 53 familias que viven a orillas del río Aguarico en la región amazónica nororiental ecuatoriana. Los Siekopai (que significa personas multicolores) son conocidos por su perspicacia chamánica y su conocimiento sobre plantas medicinales, con usos para más de 1,000 plantas diferentes. […]
Read More… from Leer: Esperanza en la Amazonía: Entrevista con Jimmy Piaguaje
When the news finally came that the democratic candidate Joe Biden had won the state of Pennsylvania, putting him over the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the United States presidential election, our household cheered! I ran outside – not to the streets because where we live there are none – but because […]
It was the Prussian polymath, scientist and writer Alexander von Humboldt (1767-1835) who paved the way for biogeography – the study of species and ecosystems across space and time – becoming established as an empirical science. The publications that emerged from his many expeditions are recognised as foundational to our present understanding of nature as a single great […]
This year we went on holiday to the north west coast of Scotland. We were looking for some respite from overcrowded parks, bad news and the frenzy of disconsolation, and had heard good things. The drive was long and twisting but it didn’t disappoint. With every dark loch and crag from Fort William, and […]
Migration seasonal migration has lost its language. birds commence reverse flight. head for land that does not exist. island holds breath, throws up sick. human limbs made tides rogue whip. birds circle, cry. swansong is choking sob. our talk is famous. when lunged with death you were brick. a witness […]
Look at that tree, said Mimi, look at that tree and write about it. But Mimi, I don’t know the name of that tree. I can describe it but can’t distinguish it, tall, brown, bursting with leaves like a loaded wallet, autumn’s green and yellow receipts. Mimi, is it against my nature to notice the […]
Read More… from Read: City Boy Talks To TreesRaymond Antrobus