Imagining Tomorrow’s Countryside

About the Event

Melissa Harrison is a celebrated novelist, nature writer, podcaster and children's author. Her 2018 novel  All Among the Barley  was the UK winner of the European Prize for Literature. Her work has been shortlisted for the Costa Book Award and the Wainwright Prize and longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. Her acclaimed new novel, The Given World, conjures a vision of a changing countryside…In the ancient Welm Valley, something is shifting: the river is behaving oddly, while the arrival of spring, with its familiar rhythms, is shadowed by an undercurrent of unease.

Melissa will be in conversation with Nicola Chester and JC Niala from the Future Rural anthology, published by Little Toller, which gathers together a powerful chorus of diverse voices—writers, farmers, activists, ecologists, and thinkers – and asks them to interrogate the past and present in order to imagine what lies ahead for Britain’s rural landscapes and communities. 

It promises to be an inspiring discussion, covering everything from the creativity of the countryside, the growing threats of climate change and habitat loss and the complex realities facing our countryside. 

Nicola Chester

Nicola Chester has written about nature and our relationship with it for nearly two decades. She is a Guardian Country Diarist and the RSPB’s first and longest-running female columnist. Her new book, Ghosts of the Farm: Two Women’s Journeys Through Time, Land and Community, Nicola Chester (Chelsea Green Publishing) has been longlisted for this year’s Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing. 

JC Naila

JC Niala is an award-winning nature writer, anthropologist and historian whose work explores how our relationships with land shape the futures we are able to imagine. Working across essays, poetry and public history she brings cultural memory into conversations with questions of belonging, community and ecological change. Her essay ‘Return to Utopia’ appears in Future Rural drawing on her longstanding work on allotments and describes how everyday acts of growing can help create more hopeful futures.

Arrivals and timing information

The FarmED bar will be open from 7pm for wine, beer and soft drinks. The talk itself will begin at 7.30pm, followed by a chance to buy a signed and dedicated copy of Future Rural and Melissa Harrison’s book from the Jaffé & Neale pop-up book stall.

This event is in collaboration with Jaffé & Neale Bookshop. 

Cancellation Policy

We understand that there may be times where you need to cancel your booking.  Our cancellation policy is outlined here.

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