The lockdowns of 2020/2021 galvanised and expanded a readership drawn to writing about the natural world. For the fortunate, the pause and hush offered space to witness the seasons unfolding, to hear voices other than our own, and to realise “our” story is deeply entangled with other lives. Undisturbed by the hum of road and shipping traffic, birdsong and the buzz of pollinators were amplified in our days’ soundtracks, and whales were recorded for the first time speaking in complex “sentences”. With the grave threat posed by the compound climate, ecological and biodiversity crises, a need and longing to repair our connection to the living world is keenly felt by many, and literature is playing a key role.
While the early nature writing canon leaned towards natural history – often at arm’s length, often written by a man out in a “wild” place – recent forms are bringing the issues of our time closer to home in memoir, making vivid the lives of others – human and not. The diversification of authors and of the places, cultures, and beings represented are lending vitality to the genre. A current fascination with the intelligences of the “‘more-than-human” world is firmly placing nature as protagonist rather than in service to a human plot.
