Writing Wild 1

November issue of the Wild Women Writers' Salons

The Wild Women Writers’ Salons kicked off in October, with authors Rebecca Smith, Catrina Davies and Nicola Chester joining us in conversation. It was a fascinating dive into writing about rural landscapes and lives, in which we discussed (amongst many things) the challenges of writing honestly about (and within) rural lives, what it means to belong to a landscape - especially at a time of increased housing insecurity in rural areas, and the relationship between protest and hope in a time of climate crisis. For those of you who missed it, remember that you can upgrade to our paid subscription and access recordings of all salon events as we go along.

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Salon 2

Earth Matters: words of connection and care in a time of crisis

Thursday 30th November at 7 - 8.30pm GMT

Join us for Salon 2, where we will be taking a deep dive into writing as guardianship and our role as writers in a time of crisis, with authors Katie Holten (The Language of Trees: how trees make our world, change our minds and rewild our lives), Kerri ni Dochartaigh (Cacophony of Bone) and Nan Shepherd Prize 2021 winner, Marchelle Farrell (Uprooting - From the Caribbean to the Countryside – Finding Home in an English Country Garden).

Introducing our Salon Guests

Katie Holten is an artist and activist, born in Ireland and living in New York City and Ardee, Ireland. In 2003, she represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale. She has had solo exhibitions at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, and Dublin City Gallery: The Hugh Lane. Her drawings investigate the entangled relationships between humans and the natural world.

She has created Tree Alphabets, a Stone Alphabet, and a Wildflower Alphabet to share the joy she finds in her love of the more-than-human world. Her work has appeared in the Irish Times, New York Times, Artforum, and frieze. She is a visiting lecturer at the New School of the Anthropocene. If she could be a tree, she would be an Oak.

The Language of Trees

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2023 BRITISH BOOK DESIGN & PRODUCTION AWARDS*

THE IRISH TIMES BESTSELLER

A stunning international collaboration that reveals how trees make our world, change our minds and rewild our lives – from root to branch to seed.

In this beautifully illustrated collection, artist Katie Holten gifts readers her visual Tree Alphabet and uses it to masterfully translate and illuminate pieces from some of the world’s most exciting writers, artists, activists and ecologists.

Holten guides us on a journey from prehistoric cave paintings and creation myths to the death of a 3,500 year-old cypress tree, from Tree Clocks in Mongolia and forest fragments in the Amazon to the language of fossil poetry. In doing so, she unearths a new way of seeing the natural beauty that surrounds us and creates an urgent reminder of what could happen if we allow it to slip away.

Printed in deep green ink, The Language of Trees is a celebratory homage filled with prose, poetry and art from over fifty collaborators, including Ursula K. Le Guin, Robert Macfarlane, Zadie Smith, Radiohead, Elizabeth Kolbert, Amitav Ghosh, Richard Powers, Suzanne Simard, Gaia Vince, Tacita Dean, Plato and Robin Wall Kimmerer.

‘One of the most inspired items of environmental literature in recent years.’ IRISH INDEPENDENT

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Marchelle Farrell is a therapist, writer and amateur gardener. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, she has spent the last twenty years attempting to become hardy in the UK. She has trained and worked as a consultant psychiatrist and psychotherapist. When not neglecting it for the care of her young children, or her work in the community, Marchelle spends much of her time getting to know her country garden in Somerset and writing about the things the garden teaches her about herself. Her debut Uprooting won the Nan Shepherd Prize.

Uprooting

WINNER OF THE 2021 NAN SHEPHERD PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITING

What is home? It’s a question that has troubled Marchelle Farrell for her entire life. A longed-for career in psychiatry saw her leave behind the pristine beaches and emerald hills of Trinidad. Until, disillusioned, she uprooted again, this time for the peaceful English countryside.

The only Black woman in her village, Marchelle hopes to grow a new life. But when a worldwide pandemic and a global racial reckoning collide, the upheaval of colonialism that has led her to this place begins to be unearthed. Is this really home? And can she ever feel truly grounded here?

Drawn to her new garden, Marchelle begins to examine this complex and emotional question through the psychotherapeutic lens of her work. As her relationship with the garden deepens, she discovers that her two conflicting identities are far more intertwined than she had realised.

Full of hope and healing, Uprooting is a book about finding home where we least expect it, and which invites us to reconnect to the land – and ourselves.

‘… a lens from which to consider to place, people and planet. At time universal, at other times, strikingly personal’ GARDENS ILLUSTRATED

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Kerri ní Dochartaigh is a mother and writer from the north-west of Ireland, now living in Clare with her family. She writes about nature, literature and place for the Guardian, Irish Times, the BBC and others. Her first book, Thin Places, was published in spring 2021, for which she was awarded the Butler Literary Award 2022, and highly commended for the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing 2021. Cacophony of Bone is her second book.

Cacophony of Bone

LONGLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITING
A WATERSTONES’ BEST BOOK OF 2023: NATURE AND TRAVEL

Two days after the Winter Solstice in 2019 Kerri and her partner M moved to a small, remote railway cottage in the heart of Ireland. They were looking for a home, somewhere to stay put. What followed was a year of many changes. The pandemic arrived and their isolated home became a place of enforced isolation. It was to be a year unlike any we had seen before. But the seasons still turned, the swallows came at their allotted time, the rhythms of the natural world went on unchecked. For Kerri there was to be one more change, a longed-for but unhoped for change.

Cacophony of Bone maps the circle of a year – a journey from one place to another, field notes of a life – from one winter to the next. It is a telling of a changed life, in a changed world – and it is about all that does not change. All that which simply keeps on – living and breathing, nesting and dying – in spite of it all. When the pandemic came time seemed to shapeshift, so this is also a book about time. It is, too, a book about home, and what that can mean. Fragmentary in subject and form, fluid of language, this is an ode to a year, a place, and a love, that changed a life.

‘Raw, visionary, lucid and mystical’ KATHERINE MAY

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Introducing the salon host…

Victoria Bennett is an award-winning disabled poet, author, carer and founder of Wild Women Press. Her debut memoir, All My Wild Mothers: motherhood, loss and an apothecary garden, was long-listed for the Nan Shepherd Prize, and won the New Writing North Northern Debut Award. When the impact of grief, motherhood, and illness force a move to a new build social housing estate in rural Cumbria, Victoria and her young son set about transforming the rubble of the former brownfield site into a wild, apothecary garden. With no money and only the weeds they can find for free, they discover that sometimes life grows, not in spite of what is broken, but because of it. A memoir of motherhood, grief, and the archaic wisdom of plants, rooted in the familiar and forgotten that lies beneath our feet.

‘Lyrical and beautiful and feels like a haven in a cynical world - exactly the book we all need to read right now’ CATHERINE SIMPSON

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What are the Wild Women Writers’ Salons?

The Wild Women Writers’ Salons will run on the last Thursday of every month, alternating between day and evening events, all the way until October 2024. Our first year focuses on memoir and creative non-fiction - and what a fantastic line-up of wild women writers we have for you!

With a treasure chest of amazing writers from across the globe. these are different from your regular Zoom sessions. We're creating a welcoming and inspiring space for authors of memoirs and creative non-fiction to take a deep-dive into their writing journeys.

Each salon will feature three amazing guest women writers from across the globe. Here’s a sneak peek of what you can expect:

• Dive deep into the world of words.

• Hear authors share their works.

• Get a behind-the-scenes look at the creative process.

• Real talk about publishing highs and lows.

• Engage in some heart-to-heart during the Q&A session.

Remember, ticket sales & subscriptions help towards valuing and paying the amazing people who are making these salons possible - from behind the scenes to fabulous authors!

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That’s all for this month for free subscribers. We will continue to bring you advance notice of our salons throughout the year, but if you’d like to receive access to more behind-the-scenes conversations with our guest authors, event recordings, writing prompts, opportunities and more, do consider upgrading to a paid subscriber.

Keep writing wild!

Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash