Toby Litt, Author at Writers Rebel

Q&A with Tracey Williams, founder of Lego Lost at Sea
Toby Litt

8th March 2023

One of the most beautiful and affecting environmentally-related Twitter accounts is Lego Lost at Sea. Most often, it first presents many followers with a hauntingly eroded plastic figure – like an unfinished painting by Charles Munch – and asks them to identify it. Very quickly, it will be identified as, for example, something a […]

Where the Seals Sing
Susan Richardson

8th March 2023

Grunts and snorts and wails were bringing depth and texture to the pre-dawn dark. From my dune-top spot, my eyes gradually acclimatised to the lack of light and I managed to make out hordes of hulking forms persistently shunting themselves into new configurations on the beach. Soon, a bloom of peach on the skyline […]

What Would a Whale Say?
Sean Lusk

2nd March 2023

A little while ago Caitlin Moran wrote about Greta Thunberg. The article, laced with Moran’s characteristic humour, was respectful and admiring, but a line towards the end snagged me. Moran, discussing predictions that humans will soon be able to communicate meaningfully with whales, asked Greta what she thought whales would have to say about […]

Art and Activism
Tom Hardy

24th February 2023

Picture this… a man walks into a gallery and throws black ink over a renowned artwork. Not, as you would be forgiven thinking, a Just Stop Oil intervention but a 1994 reaction by artist Mark Bridger to Damien Hirst’s pickled sheep creating a new work he called “Black Sheep” which was in turn absorbed […]

A GRANDMA’S TALE
Sue Hampton

16th February 2023

In a downmarket flat in a comfortable English town there lived a shy grandma. She lived with the guilt of breaking her children’s hearts and she didn’t suppose it would ever ease. But now that she had grandbabies she was determined to give them all the love, fun and care her slightly creaky body […]

After Reading the Lorax as a Bedtime Story
Jessie Tomlinson

9th February 2023

When I was in high school, I babysat for my next-door neighbours, and one time – I was about fifteen – their seven-year-old daughter came downstairs after I’d put her to bed, unable to sleep. I picked out a story to read to her for comfort and – unthinkingly – chose The Lorax. At […]

Walrus
Iszi Jones

2nd February 2023

WALRUS It began in Scarborough, on New Year’s Eve, beside the sea The discarded boot perhaps, of some vagrant giant Washed up on smaller shores; Prised us open with ivory prongs Finding things we carried with us from afar Quite unaware. The wonderfully-worn-loved leather jacket I lost in Manchester in 1992 When I […]

Q&A with Vik Sharma
Toby Litt

2nd February 2023

How did the collaboration between you and Ruth Padel on 24 Splashes of Denial come about? The Sixth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was the beginning. Its release was shocking and psychically disturbing for many of us. Inaction felt like a betrayal of everything I loved, believed in, […]

The Two Unseens
Brandon Ra Pestano

2nd February 2023

Brandon Ra Pestano is a 26 year old poet of mixed Guyanese and English heritage from Brighton, England. He has represented the South of England in spoken word at the National Portrait Gallery, as well as performing his poetry at Greenwich West Gallery and having a short poetry film exhibited at the Institute […]

Q&A with Tom Bullough
Toby Litt

26th January 2023

Can you tell us a little bit about how you came to write Sarn Helen? In one way, it’s a conventional travel book, with the reader following the writer on a long journey by foot. But in another way, it’s a powerful factual piece of non-fiction that sketches out the science of the climate crisis […]

Q&A with Sean Rabin
Sally O'Reilly

19th January 2023

Australian author Sean Rabin’s novel The Good Captain is an environmental thriller that warns against complacency about the climate crisis. Set in the mid 21st century during a time of plummeting fish stocks, it presents a disturbing picture of what the world might soon become. The story follows a group of radical environmentalists committed […]

Occupy Time
Barbara Leckie

12th January 2023

A week ago the world outside my window in Ottawa was covered in snow. But today—in the month when people make resolutions, seek to realize resolutions, or reject resolutions—it is raining. I can hear the rain as I write. It would be a soothing sound if it did not also sound like the chronicle […]

Prisoner of Conscience
Janine Eagling

6th January 2023

Until a couple of years ago, I would not have imagined I would ever go to prison. Then the moment came when I realised that the forms of climate protest I had participated in for 30 years – petitions, marches, letters to my MP, joining environmental organisations – were not working. So with time […]

Public figures speak up for protesters in prison
Writers Rebel

6th January 2023

Brian Eno, David Gilmour, Nick Hornby, A L Kennedy, Robert Macfarlane, Ben Okri, Chris Packham, Helen Pankhurst, Miranda Richardson, Sir Simon Schama, Kamila Shamsie, Lemn Sissay, Ali Smith, Juliet Stevenson and Dame Emma Thompson are among those who have signed a letter which begins: ‘We are writing in solidarity with all those in the […]

Why Go Off-Grid?
Nick Rosen

22nd December 2022

Two magical things happen when you move from the grid-connected life to an off-grid existence. The first is that you become instantly attuned to the natural world. You centre yourself around the daylight hours, because your batteries, if you have any, must be preserved for the essentials. The rain, sun and wind directly affect your […]

HOW DOLPHINS AND WHALES CAN TEACH US TO SURVIVE
Rupert Read and Joe Eastoe

15th December 2022

Who are you? You go to work, hang out with friends, care for your family. You may have a favourite meal or song or movie or memory. You read certain books, purchase a specific newspaper, have your own affiliations, and vote in a certain way. You are you in a way no one else […]

Just Stories: How Speculative Fiction can Challenge Climate Apartheid
Nick Wood

8th December 2022

Speculative Fiction (SF) models potential scenarios for the future of humanity by proposing alternative visions of the future that evoke different ways of inhabiting the world. But such templates can threaten the status quo: during apartheid in South Africa, several SF novels were banned, and the current right-wing book-bans in the United States show that […]

UTQIAGVIK : WHALE SNOW
Doreen Cunningham

1st December 2022

Latitude: 71° 17′ 26″ N Longitude: 156° 47′ 19″ W Big fat flakes of snow drifted past the kitchen window. I watched them fall, while stirring honey into my oatmeal. ‘Whale snow.’ Julia sighed. ‘That’s the kind of snow you get when whales are around. They’re out there. Just we can’t get to them.’ […]

What is the Price of Experience?
Writers Rebel

18th November 2022

Today Writers Rebel took action against the Institute of Economic Affairs. We made this statement about why we did so. We choose the Institute of Economic affairs because its work is encouraging those politicians and fossil fuel companies who are right now leading us to a cliff edge. Its utterances constantly deny the […]

Q&A with Sarah Bridle: Fixing Our Food System
Katie Percival

17th November 2022

Writers Rebel’s Katie Percival interviews Professor Sarah Bridle, a UK-based interdisciplinary researcher and writer concerned with what our food system is doing to climate change, and what we might need to do to fix it. Katie Percival: Your background is as an astrophysicist, but in the last few years you’ve turned your attention to […]

Q&A with Jessica Gaitán Johannesson
Toby Litt

10th November 2022

Although it looks quite slim, The Nerves and Their Endings: essays on crisis and response is a really big, ambitious, global book that speaks very clearly to lots of aspects of the present moment. It insists on an intimate relation between the individual body and the whole environment. It’s very moving and full of insights. How […]