edited by Hetty Saunders & Jos Smith

Between the poles of utopian and dystopian writing, there is a more ambiguous space of apprehension which is as real as it is difficult to describe. Speculative Nature Writing invites the reader into such spaces, where nature, like the future, is plural, contested and undecided, and where there is everything still to play for.

This anthology brings together new and established authors at the speculative edge of nature writing. Authors whose work is testing the overlap between fiction and non-fiction, pushing at familiar forms and conventions, curious about marginalised experiences, or reaching towards an uncertain future and trying to meet it with a love for the particular. There are stories of disorientation, stories of outrage and stories that meet today’s anxieties with a much-needed exuberance.

The editors propose ‘speculative nature writing’ as an intervention in current ways of thinking about nature and current ways of imagining our shared futures. Speculative Nature Writing brings these futures alive in unnerving, ambiguous and provocative ways to address some of the difficult questions about value, meaning, identity and sustainability that we face in a changing world.

Helen Baczkowska | Sohini Basack | Anna Fleming | Lisa Hibl | Theo Reeves-Evison | Krista Lysack | Sonia Overall | Karen Lloyd | Anita Roy | Sibyl R. Cooper | Holly Corfield Carr | Richard Kerridge | James McDermott | Ben Smith

Speculative Nature Writing has been illustrated by Antonia Glucksman. Antonia is a regular Guillemot collaborator and has worked with us on titles by David Harsent, JR Carpenter, Maria Stadnicka, Karenjit Sandhu, Lucy Burnett, and more.

ISBN 978-1-913749-46-0 / 260 pages / 184 x 140mm / Section sewn / Made with Favini Crush and Arena