I did my GCSEs last year, a few weeks after the April Rebellion. I just scraped through – when you’ve spent two weeks on the barricades watching people being carried away by the police and hearing scary facts about the future of the planet, exams don’t seem that important. Why do I care how […]
Read More… from Read: I dropped out of school to protest the Climate Emergency
Blue Sandford
Much is made of the relationships, the intersections, the similarities and differences between various feelings and emotional states. How do you tell envy from jealousy? Why does love so readily turn to hate? What are the tonal variations between shame and embarrassment, fear and anxiety, guilt and remorse? I find myself churning over these […]
‘On a hill above the valley there was a wood. In the wood there was a huge tree. Under the tree there was a hole. In the hole lived Mr Fox and Mrs Fox and their four Small Foxes.’ These are the opening lines of Fantastic Mr Fox by Roald Dahl. It’s July […]
Read More… from Read: Blog From the Treetops in the Roald Dahl Woods
Amy Caitlin Pritchard
It was a windswept Saturday afternoon in early February this year, as I huddled by the doorway of the Coach House at Kelmscott House, Hammersmith waiting to meet the writer Zakia Carpenter-Hall. “… the wallpaper man.” A snippet from a breeze-snatched conversation interrupted my thoughts. William Morris: Wallpaper Man. Somewhat irrationally the words irked […]
Read More… from Read: William Morris and the Art of Dissent
Clare Conway
Dundee, where I grew up, is currently among the world’s coolest small cities. It has a V&A and hotels surrounding the V&A, not just to mask the city centre from visitors. In my day, Dundee was post-industrial, reliant on a few failing employers, full of health and social risks, particularly for the poor. But […]
Your new book is about a very special tree and – perhaps – it’s also about our relationship to time, human time versus ‘nature time’? Could you tell us a bit more about what inspired you to write it? Has your relationship with this tree changed the way you perceive other trees? Can you […]
Read More… from Read: Q&A With Radio 4 ‘Book of the Week’ Author James Canton
James Canton
For a Coming Extinction (after W. S. Merwin) You whom we have named Charger, Challenger, Great King, and Noor the shining one, now that you are at the brink of extinction, I am writing to those of you who have reached the black groves of the sky, where you […]
XRWRITERSREBEL · Twenty Four Splashes Of Denial by Ruth Padel Ruth Padel is a poet, novelist and non-fiction author, Professor of Poetry at King’s College London, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Zoological Society of London. She has published a novel focusing on wildlife in India, and a range of non-fiction […]
Read More… from Listen: Twenty Four Splashes of Denial
Ruth Padel
I remember the moment of panic on the tube as it clattered towards Waterloo. Was I really going to go through with this? I was in my mid-fifties, a grandmother to two, and I had agreed to be part of a topless protest on Waterloo Bridge. What was I thinking? Let’s begin with the easy […]
Read More… from Read: Where Are Their Cats?
Jessica Townsend
As I lay in the middle of the road outside Downing Street, surrounded by police, awaiting my imminent arrest, I looked up at a cloudless blue sky. It felt like a sign that the rain had finally stopped and, as I enjoyed the sun on my face, one of London’s famous parakeets flew overhead. […]
Read More… from Read: Tear Gas or Tea? A Very English Arrest
Beth Pitts
Shoulder Season The creature lies still in the villa’s pool, waiting for the day the caretaker rolls back the tarp and the first wasps of the year thrash themselves to stillness. Then they come, writhing on their inflatables, the holidaymakers. It’s not until midweek that the family’s youngest, grown sufficiently bored and appalled, […]
ARE YOU HERE FOR THIS? < RANT WRITTEN TO BE READ LOUD WRITERS REBELLION, TRAFALGAR SQUARE, OCTOBER 2019 > THIS IS THE WRITERS REBELLION CALLING! I AM HERE FOR THIS! ARE YOU HERE FOR THIS? CALLING ALL MY BOOKISH COMRADES. ALL THE INKY-FINGERED INTROVERTS, THE BESPECTACLED PEN PUSHERS, CALLING ALL WRITERS AND READERS, BOOK LOVERS […]
Nine months later, and for the first time in my life, I am on trial, for breaching a ‘Section 14’ order intended to clear rebels off the streets. In the dock, I take the oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Telling the truth because other people haven’t. The […]
The People of the River Rise reading, hosted by Culture Declares, took place during lockdown on 20 May 2020. It was organised by Paul Ewen and hosted by Toby Litt. The writers who took part were Alfie, Chloe Aridjis, Jeff Goodell, Monique Roffey, Susana Medina, Edward Platt, Clare Morrall, Anoucha Grose, Jessica Townsend, Josh Appignanesi, […]
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