Yesterday the Longlist for the 2020 Wainwright prize was announced (https://wainwrightprize.com/) this year there are two categories, UK Nature Writing, and Writing for Global Conservation.
The Wainwright prize has been going since 2014 and is designed to celebrate the best in nature writing. The prize was named after Alfred Wainwright, author of the hillwalking series about the lakeland fells.
I have read (before the announcement) one in each category, Rebirding, and Dancing with Bees. My plan is to read the rest and blog about it as I go along, and produce a blog post about each book.
The shortlist is announced on 30th July, which gives me approximately 3 days a book, which will be just about achievable. I am going to read in a fairly random order – based in part on what I can get my hands on – and will be a mixture of physical and ebooks (and hopefully some from the library if they reopen as planned in the beginning of July).
The longlist of each category is listed below, as I read I will update each title to a link of my blog post about each title.
2020 Longlist for Nature Writing
Dancing with Bees – Brigit Strawbridge Howard
Dark, Salt, Clear – Lamorna Ash
Diary of a Young Naturalist – Dara McAnulty
Native: Life in a Vanishing Landscape – Patrick Laurie
Surfacing – Kathleen Jamie
The Frayed Atlantic Edge – David Gange
The Well Gardened Mind – Sue Stuart-Smith
Wanderland – Jini Reddy
Wild Child – Patrick Barkham
Wintering – Katherine May
2020 Longlist for Writing on Global Conservation
Bloom: From Food to Fuel – Ruth Kassinger
Greenery – Tim Dee
Harvest – Edward Posnett
Irreplaceable – Julian Hoffman
Life Changing – Helen Pilcher
Losing Eden – Lucy Jones
Notes from an Apocalypse – Mark O’Connell
Rebirding – Benedict Macdonald
Sitopia – Carolyn Steel
What we need to do now – Chris Goodall
Working with Nature – Jeremy Purseglove
The aim for this reading project is to continue to develop my understanding of both the natural environment and nature writing. Furthermore as a geography teacher I hope to get some useful information to embed in my teaching.