Activist and writer discusses how we can work as a community to help save nature, including Hungerford's Swift Town project and Inkpen lapwing story
Wild Service - Why Nature Needs You is a book by a collection of established and new writers, as part of or inspired by the new Right to Roam movement, which was founded by West Berkshire's bestselling author, artist and campaigner Nick Hayes (The Book of Trespass, The Trespasser's Companion) and award-winning and bestselling author and campaigner Guy Shrubsole (Who Owns England, The Lost Rainforests, The Lie of the Land - which comes out on Thursday) who grew up in Newbury.
The movement aims to secure responsible, informed and greater access to the countryside. The group has grown to encompass well-known and award-winning nature writers and environmental activists in a modern Bloomsbury-style movement.
The Wild Service Book Club is an online discussion with each of its 13 writers on their particular theme.
Tonight (Thursday, 6.30pm), as part 7 of the Wild Service Bookclub, Inkpen nature writer and activist Nicola Chester will be discussing hers - Community - with author and campaigner Sophie Pavelle and Guy Shrubsole in a chapter on YouTube. It will feature local incidences of how we can work as a community to include and help save nature for the good of all - Hungerford's Swift Town project features, as does an Inkpen Lapwing story.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g3_bPAGv7IM
Nick Hayes and Nicola Chester have both written award-winning books and have been shortlisted and highly commended for the Wainwright Nature Writing Prize, and Amy-Jane Beer of the group and Guy Shrubsole both won their categories of the Wainwright Prize this year. It was dubbed 'the Wainwright to Roam Prize’.
“The movement has inspired other groups and Wild Service is a kind of manifesto for why we need a new connection to nature and how we can do it,” says Nicola.
“Wild Service is a collection of essays, an 'all-star ensemble piece', around the thinking behind why a new connection with nature, one that gives back, is needed.
“Edited by Nick Hayes and Jon Moses, it includes radical new writing on different themes - mine is 'Community' - from authors such as Nick Hayes, Guy Shrubsole, Amy-Jane Beer, Nadia Shaikh, award-winning singer, songwriter, author Sam Lee (The Book of the Nightingale) high profile environmental barrister and founder of Law For Nature Paul Powesland.
“It's beautifully illustrated by Nick Hayes and was launched at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square this spring.”
It’s a busy time for Nicola, who has appeared on a panel at Global Birdfair with Lucy Lapwing, Amy-Jane Beer, Nadia Shaikh and will be at Wimbledon Book Fest with Sam Lee and Jon Moses next month.”
Wild Service is the third anthology Nicola has appeared in this year - the other two are Under the Changing Skies, the Best of The Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024, edited by Paul Fleckney with an introduction by Ian McMillan (Faber, out September 26) and Kin, A Celebration of Romany, Traveller and Nomadic Women's Poetry, Story and Art (Salmon Poetry, out September 27) in which she has a piece of memoir prose.
She will also be judging the inaugural Climate Fiction Prize sponsored by Climate Spring and with a prize of £10,000, along with Tori Tsui, David Lindo, Madeleine Bunting and Andy Fryers. It was launched at Hay Festival this year and Nicola is currently reading for the longlist, which will be announced later this autumn.
As well as being an ambassador for the new Kennet Valley Wetland Reserve in Hungerford and a Rewild Yourself Champion, Nicola is well into writing her next book, which she says will be locally based, but with wider messages.
We look forward to its publication.