Through December I worked my way through this beautifully curated anthology featuring both fiction and non-fiction short stories focused on nature.
The beautiful bits of Winter are captured within the collection – Innuit Folk Tales, the starling murmurations across the Somerset levels, the bits we often take for granted when a season changes.
The harshness of Winter is also captured, though, and that makes this a rounded collection with both the best and the more harrowing that a season has to offer.
About the Book
From the author of Fifty Words for Snow comes a treasure trove of nature tales from storytellers across the globe, bringing a little magic and wonder to every winter night.
As the evenings draw in – a time of reckoning, rest and restoration – immerse yourself in this new seasonal anthology. Nature Tales for Winter Nights puts winter – rural, wild and urban – under the microscope and reveals its wonder.
From the late days of autumn, through deepest cold, and towards the bright hope of spring, here is a collection of familiar names and dazzling new discoveries.
Join the naturalist Linnæus travelling on horseback in Lapland, witness frost fairs on the Thames and witch-hazel harvesting in Connecticut, experience Alpine adventure, polar bird myths and courtship in the snow in classical Japan and ancient Rome. Observations from Beth Chatto’s garden and Tove Jansson’s childhood join company with artists’ private letters, lines from Anne Frank’s diary and fireside stories told by indigenous voices.
A hibernation companion, this book will transport you across time and country this winter.
About The Author
Nancy Campbell is a poet and non-fiction writer. Her work has engaged with the polar environment since a winter spent as Artist in Residence at the most northern museum in the world on Upernavik in Greenland in 2010. Her books include Fifty Words for Snow, a Waterstones Book of the Month, her memoir Thunderstone: Finding Shelter from the Storm and The Library of Ice: Readings in a Cold Climate. She was appointed Canal Laureate in 2018, writing poems for installation across the UK waterways from London Docklands to the River Severn, and received the Ness Award from the Royal Geographical Society in 2020. She lives in a van outside Oxford.
Photo by Annie Schlechter
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