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Author launches second award-winning climate novel
Environmental fiction writer Deborah Tomkins, who founded the Bristol Climate Writers group and was called “a writer to watch” by the Guardian, is celebrating the publication of her second award-winning novel.
Her first book-length publication Aerth, published in January, imagined the reality of an inhabited planet going through an ice age and was named joint winner of the Weatherglass Novella Prize by acclaimed author Ali Smith who called it “deep-forged, witty and resonant” and “dimensionally stunning”.
Her second book-length publication, The Wilder Path, was published at the end of May by Aurora Press. It won the Virginia Prize for Fiction in 2024.
The novel is a story centred around grief and environmental awakening, following the story of the mother of a climate activist.
It begins in the late 90s, when awareness of climate change was low among the general public, and centres round ‘Rosalie, an ordinary mother, who profoundly disagrees with her student son’s eco-activism, thinking that he will grow out of it. But after a tragedy, she decides she owes it to him to find out more’.
Eventually ‘caught between the cliffs and an unforgiving storm, Rosalie’s fight for survival becomes a reckoning with her troubled past.’
Tomkins came to climate writing with a long held love for nature established in childhood and, initially, a sense that no one else was writing environmental fiction that heightened readers’ sense of the crisis.
“The way to people’s hearts is through story,” the author told Bristol24/7. “Most people aren’t interested in facts and figures, they’d much rather hear a story that makes sense of it.
“With story, you’re trying to give people an idea of what’s possible, how things could be better than what we have now. Then people might start thinking, maybe we can aim for that.”
Tomkins launches The Wilder Path at Stanfords on June 5 and the book is available to purchase from Aurora Metro.
Main image: Deborah Tomkins
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