Roz Dineen
Roz Dineen was an editor at the Times Literary Supplement for 12 years, serving as fiction editor and later features editor. Her essays and reviews have covered a range of topics from addiction to motherhood. She studied English literature at Trinity College, Dublin, received a master’s degree in international studies and diplomacy from SOAS, London, and was a Robert L. Bartley Fellow at the Wall Street Journal. Her acclaimed first novel, set in near-future Britain, is Briefly Very Beautiful.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth by Monica Sjöö andBarbara Mor
In their compelling voyage into deep civilization, Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor visit a buried era in which the divine feminine has claimed her rightful place on the planet and within the cosmos. This is a book that challenges its readers to rethink the origins of spirituality, offering a provocative vision of what was lost—and what might yet be regained.
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
I didn’t read this until after I had finished my manuscript. Butler did everything I had hoped to do but she reached the stars.
America is a place of chaos, where violence rules and only the rich and powerful are safe. Lauren Olamina, a young woman with the extraordinary power to feel the pain of others as her own, records everything she sees of this broken world in her journal. Then, one terrible night, everything alters beyond recognition, and Lauren must make her voice heard for the sake of those she loves. Soon, her vision becomes reality and her dreams of a better way to live gain the power to change humanity forever. This seminal cli-fi novel addresses climate change, social injustice, and corporate greed in a world that has, in the years since its publication, moved beyond fiction to reality.
Sea State by Tabitha Lasley
Lasley intended to write about the men who work in the North Sea oil rigs, but this book morphs into something else. It is extraordinary.
Tabitha Lasley initially travels to Scotland to research the treacherous lives of North Sea oil workers, but her story takes an unexpected turn when she falls for one of them: the relationship is doomed from the start, but in the process she interviews over 100 rig and platform workers. The result is an almost ethnographically precise exploration of the underbelly of extractivism in which the dark allure of the rigs becomes a metaphor for the battle between desire and destruction.
Hermit: A memoir of finding freedom in a wild place by Jade Angeles Fitton
If the world is just, this will be a classic one day. It’s an exploration of human’s relationship to the land, and aloneness and it is perfect.
“I never imagined that the wind would blow me here, to a kind of isolation I have never experienced… There is never anything out here but my shadow, that no one treads on any more.” Fitton’s acclaimed memoir takes the form of a raw, unflinching journey into the cliffs and forests of Devon, where the collapsing cliffs mirror her own internal landscape. Rejecting the modern world’s suffocating demands, Fitton discovers solace in radical solitude and the fierce beauty of the living world around her. This is the vivid story of one woman’s exploration of what it means to reject the self you know in order to lean who you might yet become.
Contact our Librarian if you would like themed book lists to support teaching about climate change.
We’re always looking for contributors to our growing collection of literature to explain and explore the climate and biodiversity emergency. If you’re a writer or poet and would like to share your work or ideas, please get in touch! Contact mattroselibrary@gmail.com for prose or poetsrebelxr@gmail.com for poetry.