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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Read More… from After Reading the Lorax as a Bedtime StoryJessie Tomlinson
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Read More… from Public figures speak up for protesters in prisonWriters Rebel
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 […]
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 […]
Read More… from HOW DOLPHINS AND WHALES CAN TEACH US TO SURVIVE Rupert Read and Joe Eastoe
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 […]
Read More… from Just Stories: How Speculative Fiction can Challenge Climate ApartheidNick Wood
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.’ […]
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 […]
Read More… from What is the Price of Experience?Writers Rebel
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 […]
Read More… from Q&A with Sarah Bridle: Fixing Our Food SystemKatie Percival
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 […]
Read More… from Q&A with Jessica Gaitán JohannessonToby Litt
Recently two women threw a can of soup onto the glass protecting Vincent Van Gogh’s Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers in London’s National Gallery, and then glued their palms to the wall. Watching the YouTube video, I’m struck by how young they are. Their hands shake as they apply the glue to their palms, and […]
I watch the way you want to reach the end before you’ve begun. Here there is only this egg and our sitting in shifts to keep it warm, at the mercy of weather, another bird’s hunger. Trust me, you must go to unknown places and stay inside your body while you try. […]