We put these questions to the authors on this year’s Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing shortlist. Their answers took us in some fascinating directions – from our growing sense of disconnection from the natural world to the joy, grief and wonder that come with paying closer attention to it.
Together, they offer a glimpse into what nature writing means to the people shaping the genre today, and why these stories feel so important in a changing world.
So, why are we reading more nature writing? For these writers, one answer keeps coming back: connection. James Fox (Craftland) puts it plainly: “Nature writing is booming for the simple reason that so many people feel disconnected from nature at the moment. Many of us are leading deeply unnatural lives: living in cities, staring into screens, eating ultra-processed food.”
Luke Barley (Ancient) agrees, and roots it in evolution: “People love reading about nature because nature is home; we evolved to respond positively to the natural world… Reading about nature, perhaps second only to being in nature, puts us back in touch with our evolutionary history.”
Michael J. Warren (The Cuckoo’s Lea) sees the same hunger showing up elsewhere in culture, “a growing interest, across all ages, for things vintage and analogue: which is to say real, authentic, meaningful. It’s why… TV shows like The Detectorists strike a chord.”
And Fiona Robertson (Stone Lands) frames it as a reaction against materialism: “As a society we have become very materialist and reductionist… So many people right now seem to be yearning for a greater sense of meaning, spirituality and enchantment in their lives, and very often they are finding that, and more, in nature.”
Perhaps, then, our appetite for nature writing is really an appetite for something we feel we’ve lost: a closer connection with the world beyond our screens, cities and busy lives.
That sense of connection runs deeper than simply spending more time outdoors. For these writers, nature can also change the way we understand ourselves, and the society we have created around us.
“Nature is us,” writes Warren, “selfhood and society do not exist separately to nature. Or, they shouldn’t, and that’s where we know things have gone very wrong: we’ve spent too long over the last two centuries growing more and more detached from nature.”
Nicola Chester (Ghosts of the Farm), shortlisted for a second time, goes further: “Looking through a nature lens, we marvel at, or address something other than ourselves, that is also intrinsically of us, about us. It asks or expects nothing of us, and, though far more than a mirror, it is a reflection of who we are.”
Not everyone accepted the premise outright, though. Harriet Rix (The Genius of Trees), a self-described science writer, pushed back with characteristic curiosity: “Is it? I question the premise… There’s always an aspect of nature which is oblivious.”
It’s a useful reminder that this shortlist isn’t a chorus of agreement. Instead, these are seven writers approaching the natural world from different perspectives, asking different questions and sometimes challenging the assumptions behind them.
And perhaps that’s what makes writing about nature so powerful: it can make us feel a lot of things at once. Lucy Lapwing (Love Is A Toad) writes with real candour about the emotional cost of loving something under threat: “It’s pretty much impossible to be a human alive at this time and not feel some degree of worry about nature or the climate… the highs of beauty and wonder and love for nature, coupled with the lows of fear, anxiety and despair.” She calls this “a compost of feelings I’ve personally come to see as grief”, and hopes her book helps readers “juggle” it the way conversations with fellow nature-lovers helped her.
Chester strikes a similar note but pushes toward collective action: “I want to move people as I have been moved by nature, through the full range of emotions… so we can build a peaceful but determined army of protection for nature and our fellow humans.”
There is something particularly powerful in that idea of holding joy and grief together. Nature writing can remind us of what is beautiful and worth protecting, while giving us space to acknowledge what is being lost, and perhaps, importantly, what we can still do about it.
If the genre is changing, what might come next? The answers ranged from cautiously excited to genuinely uneasy. Chester is unequivocally hopeful: “the future can only be radiant, hopeful and galvanising.”
Lapwing wants the genre to widen further still; “I like the idea of a nature writing section in a bookshop to be so diverse that anybody could find something in there they connect with”, and points to a growing overlap between nature writing and social justice as a reason for optimism.
Rix predicts a formal shift: “I think everyone will be trying to shift their point of view away from humans and write more from the point of view of nature. I don’t feel anyone’s succeeded in telling that point of view yet, but when they do it’ll be a new and entirely unused voice.”
Warren’s answer is more conflicted. He sees nature writing engaging increasingly with AI and its effect on our relationship with the real world, “it is and will increasingly be an unavoidable influence”, but admits: “The whole thing fills me with dread, I have to say… I resist it as much as I can, so you probably won’t see me writing about the role of AI… in all this.”
If the answers from this year’s shortlist tell us anything, it’s that nature writing is a genre that continues to evolve, and perhaps its future is best left open to surprise.
We’ll leave the last word to what actually excites these writers about the natural world day to day, because beneath all the questions about the genre, there is something much simpler at its heart: a love of nature and a desire to pay attention to it.
Robertson: “There is nothing I love more than a day in the hills… shaking off my anxieties and the constrictive sense of self.”
Rix, in one sentence: “The pathways that the sun’s energy takes through it.”
And Chester, gloriously: “Nature is the most gripping of stories — stories that we’re characters in, in books that never end!”
With thanks to Fiona Robertson, Michael J. Warren, James Fox, Harriet Rix, Luke Barley, Lucy Lapwing and Nicola Chester for their answers.