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Join us for readings from three new titles by four great eco-writers. This event is free to attend, but we encourage you to book ahead via Eventbrite:
Sarah Royston will be reading from her new short story collection, Fernseed, a speculative dive into history and the English landscape. Sarah’s writing draws inspiration from queer ecologies, plant-lore and the landscapes of southern England. Her work has been published in Dark Mountain, The Rumpus and Crow & Cross Keys, among others.
Alice Willitts is a writer, editor and plantswoman from the Fens, and namechecks Nature as her forever co-author. She founded and runs The 57 Poetry Collective in Cambridge and is the creator and commissioning editor of DIRT plantable poetry with Dialect Writers. Alice will be reading from a new collection forthcoming in 2025.
Clare Pollard and Freya Sacksen's Loops is a tiny, unfoldable pamphlet poem recounting an eerie exchange between a swallow and a drone. Clare and Freya will read the entirety of Loops, as well as some of their other new work.
Clare has published five collections of poetry with Bloodaxe, with her sixth - Lives of the Female Poets - forthcoming in 2025. She has also written a non-fiction title, Fierce Bad Rabbits: The Tales Behind Childrens’ Picture Books (Fig Tree), her first children’s novel, The Untameables (The Emma Press), and two adult novels, Delphi and The Modern Fairies (Fig Tree).
Freya is a UK-based poet from Aotearoa, New Zealand. Their work has been published in digital journals EnbyLife and SWAMP, as well as ARU anthology The Word Is…SMUT. Their poetry embraces storytelling, ecopoetics, liminality and queer identity.