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The 2024 Wainwright Prize winners will be announced on September 11th and in anticipation of this annual highlight for nature and conservation writing, we met up with some of our favourite writers in the running... follow the links to our full podcasts!
Fire Weather: A True Story From a Hotter World by John Vaillant is a gripping and timely exploration of the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire. Vaillant’s vivid narrative captures the terrifying reality of this unprecedented incident in which an entire city of 90,000 people was evacuated in a state of emergency.
Not simply a recount of a single event, Fire Weather delves into climate science and the petrochemicals industry to explain how we got where we are. Vaillant's decriptions of the fire itself capture its intensity and living, breathing, ferocity.
It's a book that is both chilling and informative, and serves as a warning of what the fires of the future might be like. Our Wainwright Prize Podcast with John Vaillant is not for the faint-hearted.
A far cry from this fiery devastation in Alberta is Kat Hill’s Bothy: In Search of Simple Shelter. Here, we enter into the world of bothies—remote shelters hidden away in the Scottish wilderness.
A historian, Hill brings something new to the bothy literature table. With the help of stored away bothy visitor books she researches a beautiful tapestry that weaves together history, nature writing, and personal reflection, offering an immersive exploration of bothy culture.
It's a beautiful book, worth finding room for in your rucksack... and our Wainwright Prize Podcast with Kat Hill is also fun listening out on a walk!
Where bothies might hold tales of the harsh realities of the Scottish Clearances, Rebecca Smith's Rural: The Lives of the Working Class Countryside shares the modern realities of rural working class stories.
Smith’s personal journey from a childhood in a tied house to an adult witnessing the encroachment of urban money on rural life is both poignant and powerful.
Her analysis of how external forces have shaped rural communities sheds light on the insecurity that families and communities have faced in living and working largely in service of our cities. Our Wainwright Prize Podcast with Rebecca Hill opens up this conversation.
And the last of our picks is Local by Alastair Humphreys in which the world traveller and adventurer who famously cycled the planet, rowed the Atlantic and coined the term "Microadventure", spends a year exploring the area where he lives.
It may seem lacking in wanderlust, but in fact the results are eye-opening. Following an approach in which he visits a random square on his local map every week for a year, Humphreys provides a template for a new way of exploring and in the end finds that his "pragmatic home place" is just as interesting, if not moreso, than the many far flung landscapes that have previously drawn him away from home. Have a listen to our Wainwright Prize Podcast with Alastair Humphreys and start exploring today!
The Wainwright Prize shortlist for 2024 is a testament to the power of nature writing in addressing the most pressing issues of our time. These four books demonstrate the diversity and richness available in this genre, while all are united in their devotion to the preservation of our natural world.
The winners of this year's Wainwright Prize will be announced on the 11th September at a ceremony at Camley Street Natural Park in London.
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