Product Description'A wonderfully diverse collection of poetry and long-form prose, celebrating the four seasons of the year in a fresh and ultimately life-affirming way.' Stephen Moss'These essays urgently reimagine what nature writing can be-and whose stories belong in that canon. Gifts of Gravity and Light is generous, unsentimental, and bursting with talented voices that will shape this genre for decades to come.' Jessica J. Lee, author of Two Trees Make a Forest and Turning, and editor of The Willowherb Review***'I learned something new from each enjoyable essay and by the end realised that nature is integral to how we live on this planet, not a subsidiary to life, but at the heart of it.' - Bernardine EvaristoThe changing seasons of the year are an endless source of strangeness and wonder. Gifts of Gravity and Light invites you to experience Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter through fourteen different voices. Greet the arrival of spring in East London with a Cambodian new year's dance; watch sea otters at play in the summer sun; gather armfuls of hops in a Romany song to the autumn; yield to the icy stillness of winter in the Cairngorms or pine for 'sun drunk' days of a Jamaican childhood.With a foreword by Bernardine Evaristo and contributions from Jackie Kay, Kaliane Bradley, Pippa Marland, Testament, Michael Malay, Tishani Doshi, Jay Griffiths, Luke Turner, Anita Roy, Raine Geoghegan, Zakiya McKenzie, Alys Fowler, Amanda Thomson and Simon Armitage, this almanac reflects not only the diversity of the writers featured, but the endlessly changing natural world itself.Book DescriptionGifts of Gravity and Light is a book of nature writing unlike any other. A range of contributors from diverse backgrounds write of their encounters with the natural world over the course of one year. About the AuthorAnita Roy is a writer, editor and publisher of mixed British and Indian heritage. She spent twenty years living and working in New Delhi, until returning to the UK where she was brought up. Her work has appeared inGranta,Guernica,The Clearing and the Dark Mountain project. She has recently published an acclaimed novel for children and the nature diaryA Year at Kingcombe: The Wildflower Meadows of Dorset.Pippa Marland is an author and academic, based at the University of Bristol. Her research, currently funded by the Leverhulme Trust, focuses on nature writing, especially the representation of small islands and farming communities. Her creative writing draws on her childhood experiences of living in Ghana, Malta, West Wales, and the South of England, as well as her lifelong islomania. It has appeared inEarthlines, The Clearing, andWomen on Nature. Her academic works include the co-editedWalking, Landscape and Environment, the forthcoming co-authoredModern British Nature Writing 1789-2020: Land Lines, and a monograph entitledEcocriticism and the Island. She is also a musician and songwriter, represented by Real World Music Publishing.