How does it feel to be a judge on this year’s Wainwright Prize?
It’s been a gift, rekindling a passion for deep, attentive reading. Like many, I’d fallen into a rhythm of listening to audiobooks on walks to and from work, which is enjoyable but fleeting. Judging this year’s Wainwright Prize demanded a slower, more thoughtful approach: each book became not only a pleasure but an intellectual challenge, pushing me to engage critically and deeply. My copies are now wonderfully worn—full of underlined passages, scores of marginalia, corners folded with intention, and an enticingly long list of further reading that will outlast the judging process itself.
What do you think has been the biggest challenge and change in nature/conservation writing in the last 10 years?
As an anthropologist, I’d say the biggest change, and also challenge, in nature writing over the past decade has been its turn toward intimate, hyper-local narratives. There’s a compelling power in deeply personal stories, whether about an individual’s profound relationship with a particular animal or an intricate exploration of a small locale. These intimate accounts immerse us in worlds we’d otherwise never know, creating empathy and emotional connection. Yet, the challenge remains to boldly connect these precise, vivid narratives to broader global issues—to leverage their specificity in addressing the universal crises we all face. This next step could amplify the impact of nature writing, transforming personal reflection into collective urgency and action.
“No other genre combines poetic enchantment with quiet activism quite like it.”
Why do you believe nature writing is so important, both for yourself and others?
As someone who lives by nature writing, I carry around such books as if they’re tiny, portable sanctuaries. We live predominantly in cities now, and it’s all too easy to forget that humans are part of the natural world. Nature writing reminds us of this vital truth, bridging the concrete and the wild.
A perfect embodiment of this is The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris. In 2007, the Oxford Junior Dictionary dropped around 40 nature-related words such as “acorn,” “otter,” and “bluebell” in favour of more tech-centric terms like “blog” and “broadband”. In response, Macfarlane and Morris crafted a “spellbook” of poems and richly woven illustrations to conjure those lost words (and the creatures, plants, places they name) back into our shared vocabulary.
That project is an elegant proof that language matters, as Macfarlane noted… if we don’t have the words to describe the natural world around us, we become severed from it – and once severed, it loses profound emotional and moral value. The Lost Words have become more than a book—it’s sparked a grassroots re-wilding movement in schools, libraries, even hospital walls, emphasising the real-world impact of reconnecting with nature through language.
For both myself and readers everywhere, nature writing serves a dual purpose. First: as a personal refuge—these pages transport you to hedgerows you haven’t seen in years or the hush of dawn-lit woods. Second, as an educational and ethical tool. The language on the page can shape our awareness, and ultimately our care, for the more-than-human world we’re losing touch with. No other genre combines poetic enchantment with quiet activism quite like it.
Do you have a favourite book that you’ve read previously that’s deepened your understanding of the natural world?
It might seem a bit unexpected, but I’d have to say the Bible is one of my favourite nature books. As well as being a religious text, I approach it as a profound exploration of our relationship with the natural world. It introduces deep themes of stewardship, and it reminds us that we have responsibilities toward the earth and everything living on it. Stories like Eden speak powerfully about what it means to be disconnected from nature, hinting at the trauma and loss we feel today as we grapple with environmental breakdown. Noah’s flood, to me, isn’t just an ancient catastrophe but a striking early narrative of climate disaster and ecological collapse.
Crucially, it also carries a hopeful message that recovery, renewal, and redemption are always possible if guided by care and love. It’s a book that taught me long ago how deeply intertwined our ethical, emotional, and ecological worlds truly are.
“Nature writing is a portable sanctuary.”
Do you have a place you visit that feels intrinsic to your connection with nature?
Recently, while doing fieldwork in Kenya, I found myself outside at night and was hit by a kind of sensory jolt—I’d forgotten just how alive the darkness can be there. The fireflies danced like echoes of the stars above, and the soundscape—cicadas thrumming, the occasional rustle in the bush—wrapped around me completely. It wasn’t peaceful in a tranquil sense, but visceral, electric. I felt enveloped by it and a part of it. I could’ve stayed there for hours, just listening and watching, if I didn’t have to be up before dawn to start work again. That moment reminded me that nature isn’t always something you “visit”. Sometimes, it asserts itself so vividly that you remember the idea is very much to commune with it.
What’s your hope for the next 10 years, either for the nature publishing sector or the wider planet as a whole?
My hope is that over the next decade, nature writing becomes more deeply embedded in our educational systems—not siloed off as niche or extracurricular, but integrated into how we teach literature, science, history, even ethics. We’re seeing promising work already, like recent scholarship on Shakespeare and ecology, which repositions canonical texts in ecological contexts. That’s the kind of cross-disciplinary thinking we need.
One of the consequences of our disconnection from nature is the fragmentation of knowledge. We’ve divorced the sciences from the humanities, the environment from the economy, the local from the global. But nature writing sits at the crossroads of all of these and could play a key role in stitching them back together. That, in turn, would invigorate the nature publishing sector by broadening its audience and relevance.
And as for the wider world, perhaps strangely, I feel a cautious kind of hope. We’re talking about these issues with more urgency and nuance than ever before. Grassroots movements, often overlooked, are driving real, systemic change. My hope is that over the next ten years, we stop treating that momentum as peripheral and start recognising it as the pulse of real progress.