Nature Writing Festival: The Lost Voices
Nature-writing has never been so urgent. Writings about landscape, animals and climate interrogate how humans interact with the natural world, and influence our behaviour. But since its emergence as a genre in the late eighteenth century, nature-writing has arguably been dominated by the voice of the ‘lone, enraptured male’.
The Lost Voices festival will restore prominence to individuals and groups whose representations of the natural world have been over-shadowed by those of the white middleclass male tourist. Through readings, panel discussions, workshops, and lectures, The Lost Voices festival will amplify the voices of women writers, working-class writers, BAME writers; writers about illness, disability, childhood, sexuality and gender; and writers unveiling the historical and contemporary politics of nature-writing. The festival will also launch a new AHRC network, ‘Women In The Hills’, whose events through 2020 and 2021 will explore the factors that hinder and improve women’s access to wild environments.
The festival includes:
- lecture by Helen Mort
- session curated by the Nan Shepherd Prize, featuring three short-listed authors
- children’s workshop by Piers Torday (The Last Wild trilogy)
- and panels and readings
