THIS WEEK
Catherine Munro and Amanda Thomson, writerswhose books offer fresh perspectives on nature writing, offer their thoughts on how the genre is broadening in appeal
Country Focus: Scotland Nature writing
Putting down roots: Two nascent nature writers discuss challenging the canon
Ruth Comerfor @ruth_comerford
D
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efining home and identit is central to Catherine Munro’s forthcoming
début The Ponies at the Edge of the World (Penguin, May) and Amanda Thomson’s be/longing: understories of nature, family and home (Canongate, August), both strong additions to Scotland’s tradition of rural nature writ- ing. Each memoir connects its author’s sense of self to the landscape and calls for a greater “domestication” and expansion of the nature writing genre. Thomson, an author and lecturer in the painting and printmaking department at the Glasgow School of Art, published her Scots Dictionary of Nature with Saraband in 2019. The work, which explores the history of the old Scots language, indirectly influenced her memoir. “I was coming across words that made me think about my family and grandparents, and words I hadn’t heard since I was a kid. It made me think about how important the dead are, how they support the living, what makes us who we are and where home is,” she says.
24 18th February 2022
CATHERINE MUNRO’S FIRST BOOK IS OUT WITH PENGUIN IN MAY
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