The Wonders of Our Planet

Drawing solace and inspiration from the natural world, two wild hearts in the queer community, Natasha Carthew (Undercurrent)Mike Parker (On The Red Hill), and Éloïse O’Dwyer-Armary (Body Compost & other ghost poems) will delve into some natural world intrigue as they discuss nature-infused stories, wild writing and accepting our place in the natural world. declan wiffen (indiscriminate lanking) will chair this panel adding his own thinking about queer ecologies to the discussion.

Mike Parker has been queering place and nature writing for quarter of a century. His books include the cult bestseller Map Addict (Collins, 2009), an anarchic celebration of the humble map; The Wild Rover (Collins, 2011), a call-to-arms for our access rights; On the Red Hill (Heinemann, 2019), a passionate evocation of the queer rural that was runner-up for the Wainwright Prize and won the non-fiction Wales Book of the Year; All the Wide Border (Harper North, 2023), a meditation on identity and belonging along the frontier between England and Wales, named by Waterstones as one of the best ten travel books of last year. He was nearly elected as a Plaid Cymru MP, occasionally performs stand-up, and has written and presented numerous TV and radio series.

Natasha Carthew is a working-class writer from Cornwall. She is published by Hodder, Bloomsbury, Quercus and the National Trust. Her bestselling Nero-Award nominated Memoir Undercurrent is out now with Coronet/Hodder. She is known for writing on Socioeconomic issues and working-class representation in nature writing for several publications, podcasts and programmes; including The Booker Prize Foundation, ITV, Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook, The Royal Society of Authors Journal, BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, The Bookseller, The Guardian, Caught by the River, The Observer, Mslexia, The Dark Mountain Project, The Quietus, The Big Issue and The Economist. Natasha is Founder and Artistic Director of The Nature Writing Prize for Working Class Writers, now in its fifth year. She lives in Ireland with her girlfriend and is represented by Juliet Pickering at Blake Friedman Literary Agency. 

Éloïse O’Dwyer-Armary (she/they) is a bilingual poet born in France, based in Sussex, UK. They are a PhD researcher in ecopoetry at the University of Brighton and the recipient of a Develop Your Creative Practice grant from Arts Council England. They are the author of Body Compost & other ghost poems, Pink Goo, director of the documentary Collections Of Queer Poets, co-facilitator of the collective Collections Of Queer Poets and co-producer of the podcast Poetry To Your Ears. They have run poetry and climate workshops with schools, Lighthouse and the Society of Gender Professionals and performed their work at London Arts-Based Research Centre, Lush: Sensation, Queer The Mic and Lucy & Yak. Their work has previously been published in Magma, Young Poets Network, Happiful Magazine, Fawn Press, Sunday Mornings At The River, The Shallot, Powders Press, Aghh! Zine and other zines.

declan wiffen (he/him) teaches English Literature at The University of Kent and runs a range of writing courses thinking through questions about queer ecologies, including Cruising Nature, FUCK Plants and Gay Gardens. His pamphlet, indiscriminate lanking, came out with Invisible Hand Press in 2022.