In Her Element

“Full and serene, much more energetic than a mere mirror for the sun, the moon blazed across a vast calm expanse of sea…” Christine Evans

20 women writers from all over Wales recount their deep personal connections to the landscapes which have shaped their lives – their loves, their joys, their losses, their inner and their outer worlds.

With nature as healer and teacher as a common thread, this is a book about the unique bond with the natural world which comes over time spent in the company of wild things. There are stories where that bond is felt just for a moment – dolphins following a woman’s sailing boat around the coast of Pembrokeshire; the arc of of red kite’s tail feathers; a full moon over water; reaching the summit; the feeling of snow, or discovering stalactites underground. Others share their stories of a bond which has deepened over the years - walking a familiar mountain in all its seasons; a lifetime’s work researching one of our rarest treasures, the Snowdon lily; rediscovering the land after a diagnosis of MS; memories of life by the sea on Anglesey; a love affair with climbing which started from childhood; and saying goodbye to the headland after 50 years of farming.

This book brings a feminine perspective, with both new and established voices, to contemporary nature writing in Britain.