This speech was given by Ben Okri at Writers Rebel’s Paint The Land launch event on Friday 25th June, 2021. When Writers Rebel asked me to come up with a few words that could speak to a world on the verge of environmental catastrophe, I had a minor crisis of my own. The facts […]
Walking along the street the other day, I overheard a fragment of a conversation. A mother with a pushchair was saying confidently said to her friend, ‘You know me, I’d do anything to protect my kids’. It’s a variation of a phrase I have often heard but, just recently, the urge to interrupt and […]
Read More… from Parents for a Future – how do we broaden the movement?
Rupert Read
John Richard Granville Stevens — Granville to everyone who knows him — is standing in the field behind his farmhouse, showing me his roots. While he’s doing this, I’m thinking about Franz Kafka’s short story “In the Penal Settlement”. Farmer Granville Stevens standing in one of his cover crops. [Photo credit: JAMES FLINT] […]
This month I’m looking at two of the sacred monsters of Screenwriting Guruhood – Robert McKee (Story) and Blake Snyder (Save the Cat). If you’d like to read what’s gone before, start here; if not, read on. STORY: SUBSTANCE, STRUCTURE, STYLE AND PRINCIPLES OF SCREENWRITING ROBERT MCKEE 1997 Of […]
Read More… from How to Tell a Story to Save the World 3
Toby Litt
‘Why are we here, Mummy?’ My four year-old son asked, as we joined the swathes of Extinction Rebellion protesters in Glasgow’s George Square in September 2019. ‘The ice caps are still melting. This isn’t really going to help the polar bears, is it?’ I was slightly taken aback. Caspian had always been fascinated by wild […]
Read More… from Children of the Revolution: On Parenting and Protest
Christiana Spens
It was last August, at around three in the morning when my phone rang. I lay in bed and listened, the darkness spreading around me. Through the phone, Tania ‘Nena’ Baltazar wept. Our home is on fire. “Nuestra casa se está quemando.” I could hear the crackling of flames. I could smell it, feel the […]
The Names of Trees I I should know the names of trees and birds, and where to find them. I should have this, poised to give, to any who might need it. Dirt should sit, be lodged, tattooed, beneath my fingernails. And I should know its feel, and warmth, and temperament […]
Floating in the clouds of Venus Tie me to a met balloon and let me drift in Venus’ atmosphere, that planet masquerading as a star. Suit me up so her sulphuric acid won’t sear my lungs, turn my sugars into dirty carbon sludge; give me a microscope, so I can scan […]
Threading Our Way Peace River territory The Peace purls a ripple stitch across the Rockies down through fertile valleys air shimmers in waves over the hot road to Hudson’s Hope glistening fish hide in hollows fishers patient hopeful on the farm Grandma weaves a sheaf of wheat into wreathes […]
The Prayer of the Common Newt In a muddy pond, in the outskirts of Clydebank, a mother, with over two hundred eggs inside her, is beginning the process of giving birth. Over the next few weeks, each day she will deposit about a dozen of them not on a folded over leaf, […]
On 22 April, XR co-founder Simon Bramwell and six other rebels appeared at the Southwark Crown Court, charged with causing 25K worth of criminal damage to Shell’s London headquarters. In a historic ruling, six of the defendants were found not guilty despite admitting to criminal damage, and the judge indicating that the law pointed to […]
Read More… from The shaping of History: THE PEOPLE VERSUS SHELL
Simon Bramwell
Tom Bullough was arrested during the September rebellion for failing to comply with a section 14 of the Public Order Act 1986. This is the statement he read in his defence at the City of London magistrates’ court. He received a nine month suspended sentence and was ordered to pay costs. I would like […]
Read More… from On behalf of myself and my children…
Tom Bullough's Defence Speech: Edit
This time, I’m looking at two hugely influential screenwriting manuals – Syd Field’s Screenplay and Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey. Through the gap between them, we see the idea of heroism emerge and start to dominate the very idea of ‘a good story’. Like all film producers say, ‘The audience needs to knows who to […]
Read More… from How to Tell a Story to Save the World 2
Toby Litt
How easy is it to be conned? The short answer is that it’s as easy as falling in love. Here’s how I know. I’d always been involved in socialist and environmentalist organisations but I’d been out of the mix for a while. In 1992, when my story starts, I was recently divorced, unemployed, and alone […]
Read More… from How far will the police go? As far as they like.
Anonymous
You describe yourself as having ‘the heart of a naturalist, the head of a would-be scientist and the bones of someone who is already wearied by the apathy and destruction wielded against the natural world.’ Where do you see yourself – and the world – in 25 years’ time? Or in 50? If I […]
In June 2019, Carola Rackete, captain of the boat Sea-Watch 3, entered the port of Lampedusa and thereby defied the new Italian law against entering territorial waters. By doing so, she saved the lives of forty refugees who, in the intense heat, were suffering from thirst and threatening to throw themselves overboard – though […]
Jay, what a treat to fire you questions. As you know, I think Why Rebel is a wonder – and, really, it answers this first in itself – but all the same it is such a central question for you, for me, for so many writers: How do you square the urgency of the CEE (Climate and […]
In the next five months Writers Rebel is exclusively serialising Toby Litt’s How to Tell a Story to Save the World, a short book about storytelling, heroism, climate collapse and hope. Normally, when people come along to a creative writing class, they are hoping to learn how to write better stories, not how to […]
Read More… from How to Tell a Story to Save the World 1
Toby Litt
In Horizon, the final book from the acclaimed environmental writer, Barry Lopez, who left us on Christmas Day 2020, we are taken on a trip he made in 2012 to the Canadian High Arctic. Lopez was working as a guide and lecturer on a Canadian ecotourism vessel, where he would rise at 5:00 a.m. to […]
Katherine Angel has described your new novel, Cold New Climate, as tackling both “personal and global catastrophe”. Can you tell us a bit more about the novel and how you approached these themes? The novel came out of a sense of curiosity about myopia and entitlement. At the outset, Lydia is dissatisfied and bored in […]
Read More… from Q & A with Isobel Wohl
Including an extract from her debut novel, Cold New Climate
Poetry Rebellion is described as poems and prose to “rewild the spirit.” Can you tell us a little more about the anthology, what brought it about and who is in it? What was your criteria for selecting contributors? Batsford Books, part of Pavilion Books that published my How To See Nature, asked if I’d like […]
Read More… from Q & A with Paul Evans, Editor of Poetry Rebellion
Including featured poems