_{^{Image: Cumbria Wildlife Trust via Future Places Centre}}

Karen Lloyd, author of Abundance: Nature in Recovery, and Writer in Residence at Lancaster Future Places Centre, recently wrote to us with news of the Centre’s brand new environmental essay and poetry prize.

She elaborates: ‘From Pliny to Wordsworth and from Mary Oliver to Mark Cocker, we know that literature is a major force for communicating ideas and to influence thinking. In a time of climate and biodiversity crisis, this prize calls for essays and poems that go beyond the natural world as a mere backdrop for human recovery, but is one that exists as its own invaluable thing. 

We are calling for writing that engages with ideas of restoration and human agency – where literature is a force for helping us to see the natural world differently. Through this prize, we want to communicate how change and repair are not only possible, but happening even now, in the eye of the Anthropocene.’ 

The judging panel for the prize is composed of Eden Project co-founder Sir Tim Smit KBE, Professor of Writing in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Lancaster Dr Jenn Ashworth, and Dr John Wedgwood Clarke, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Exeter University.

The prize is open for submissions until Sunday 19 September.

More information and submission guidelines are available here.