AustLit

'In her 2019 essay collection City of Trees, author Sophie Cunningham offers a very personal reflection on urban ecosystems, grief and culture that feels all the more timely and universal ahead of Adelaide Writers’ Week 2020.' (Introduction)

'The other day someone told me one of those amazing German compound words: Waldeinsamkeit. It means the feeling of being alone in the forest, in a calm and peaceful way—communing with nature, if you like.'  (Introduction)

'When Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird wrote The Secret Life of Plants (1975), many critics labelled their attempt to prove a spiritual link between people and plants as mystical gibberish, with a New York Times review chiding the authors for pandering to charlatans and amateur psychics. The review noted that although Tompkins and Bird made a fascinating case for plant sentience ‘suspended in the aspic of their blarney, it all looks equally improbable’. In the ensuing decades, more books have been published on the life of trees and their relationship to humans, some of which have sold well and been enthusiastically received by critics. Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees: What they feel, how they communicate – discoveries from a secret world (2016) topped bestseller lists and earned him a flattering interview in the profile pages of The New York Times.'  (Introduction)