Nic’s writing features in two anthologies: Moving Mountains (2023), a collection of nature writing by people living with chronic illness and physical disability, and Katharine Norbury’s acclaimed Women on Nature (2021), which brings together women’s nature writing from the fourteenth century up to the present day.
‘From the undulations of the Peak District to the decimated indigenous flora of Jakarta, from a single falling snowflake to the enormity of the north wind, this is nature experienced wholly and acutely, written from the perspective of disabled and chronically-ill authors, those for whom climbing mountains and trekking through rough terrain is often out of reach.
Edited by author Louise Kenward, Moving Mountains is not about overcoming or conquering, but about living with and connecting, shifting the reader’s attention to the things easily overlooked by those who travel through the world untroubled by the body that carries them.’
‘Moving Mountains is a rich gift of much-needed stories and cosmologies that help us see the earth, our world and interdependence, and our ideas of “nature” and the “natural” with greater clarity. I found each of the narratives uniquely compelling, dynamic and powerful. Beautifully curated and edited with a moving introduction by Louise Kenward, Moving Mountains is a generative and profound anthology that I know I will return to – and it will help us untangle ourselves from many of the modern myths which separate and sever’ – Lucy Jones, author of LOSING EDEN and MATRESCENCE
‘Moving Mountains is a stunning book that captures the experience of living with a disability or chronic illness. Through the beautifully described narratives I felt seen, known and far less alone. Moving Mountains raises the voices of disabled authors but it offers insights to everyone, because illness impacts us all’ – Claire Wade, author of THE CHOICE
‘An important, vital, questing collection of words, stories and experiences of wild green space which asks what it means to lose oneself in nature and explores how acquaintance with living landscapes both urban and rural can earth, galvanise and inspire. An anthology to open eyes, minds and hearts, I loved it‘ – Dan Richards, author of HOLLOWAY and OUTPOST
‘There has, in recent years, been an explosion of writing about place, landscape and the natural world. But within this blossoming of interest, women’s voices have remained very much in the minority.
In Women on Nature, Katharine Norbury has sifted through the pages of women’s fiction, poetry, household planners, gardening diaries and recipe books to show the multitude of ways in which they have observed and recorded the natural world about them.’
‘‘What would happen,’ Norbury writes in her introduction to this anthology, ‘if I simply missed out the 50 percent of the population whose voices have been credited with shaping this particular cultural form?’ (ie, the ‘lone enraptured male,’ as writer Kathleen Jamie once memorably put it). The answer is a compulsively readable and constantly surprising anthology: a magpie curation of glittering treasures.
One of the many things I love about this timely book is its arrangement by alphabetical order. So you have contemporary nature blogger Nic Wilson next to Virginia Woolf, and Monica Ali rubbing shoulders with Elizabeth von Armin…’ – Tessa Boase, author of ETTA LEMON: THE WOMAN WHO SAVED THE BIRDS