About Rebecca Tamás

Rebecca Tamás is a poet, nonfiction writer, critic and lecturer at City St Georges University of London. Rebecca’s book of environmental literary and artistic criticism, Strangers: Essays on the Human and Nonhuman, was published by Makina Press in October 2020, and longlisted for The Rathbones Folio Prize in 2021. Rebecca's writing has been published in The London Review of Books, Granta and The New Statesman, amongst others.

Summary

This month I share with you my conversation with Rebecca Tamás, as we discuss Rebecca’s essay collection, Strangers: Essays on the Human and Nonhuman.

In this episode, we discuss what it means to be intimate and hospitable towards the non-human world. How might we confront our fears and prejudices towards the more-than-human world and embrace a more capacious, interspecies sense of belonging? How do we unlearn our privileging of the human species at the expense of other species flourishing and their biodiversity loss? How does eco-grief shape our sense of home and belonging?

Follow Rebecca

Twitter/X: @RebTamas

Credits

Photo of Rebecca by Sophie Davidson

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TW: Violence against women and girls, abuse and trauma

About Evie Muir (she/they)

Evie is a nature writer and the founder of Peaks of Colour - a Peak District-based nature-for-healing community group, by and for people of colour. Having worked in the Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) sector for over 10 years, specialising in Black and queer survivors' intersectional experiences of gendered and racialised trauma, Evie left the sector when they became burnt out, disenfranchised, and disillusioned. Evie's work now sits at the intersections of gendered, racial, and land justice, and they seek to nurture survivors' joy, rest, hope, and imagination as abolitionist praxis. Advocating for the decolonisation of the outdoors, Evie is interested in the ways nature can forge a landscape of healing and justice outside of carceral feminist models. As a Northern freelance writer, Evie is passionate about the liberating form of writing as healing and resistance. Evie's debut book, Radical Rest, explores Black and Abolitionist Feminist approaches to activist burnout, published by Elliot & Thompson in 2024.

Summary

In this episode, we explore Evie's debut book, Radical Rest: Notes on Burnout, Healing and Hopeful Futures, and their grassroots work as Peaks of Colour. We discuss the intersections of joy, rest, and trauma in social justice movements, specifically land justice. Evie emphasizes the importance of prioritizing radical rest and collective care to avoid burnout and ensure sustainability of social justice movements. We discuss the systemic nature of burnout and poor mental health outcomes, and the importance of trauma-informed practice. We explore the liberating, nourishing and resourcing practice of nature writing, nature-based therapies, and gathering in community in the outdoors.

Follow Evie

IG: @xeviemuir | @peaksofcolour

https://eviemuir.com/about

https://www.peaksofcolour.org/

Credits

Photo of Evie by Morgan Barfield

Please rate + review us on Spotify! Follow us on Instagram @xeno_pod and subscribe to our newsletter at xenocast.org.

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About Jessica J. Lee

Jessica J. Lee is a British-Canadian-Taiwanese author, environmental historian, and winner of the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature, a Banff Mountain Book Award, and the RBC Taylor Prize Emerging Writer Award. She is the author of three books of nature writing, Turning, Two Trees Make a Forest, and Dispersals, the children’s book A Garden Called Home, and co-editor of the essay collection Dog Hearted. She has a PhD in Environmental History and Aesthetics. Jessica is the founding editor of The Willowherb Review. Jessica’s latest book, Dispersals was shortlisted for the 2024 Wainwright Prize for nature writing.

In this episode, we discuss Lee’s new book Dispersals: On Plants, Borders and Belonging, and how we might challenge our notions and language around plants to craft a more capacious sense of belonging to encompass multicultural, migrant identities. We reflect on how the stories of plants’ movement might reflect our own more complicated stories of belonging across borders.

Follow Jessica

IG: @jessicajlee

X: @jessicajlee

https://www.jessicajleewrites.com/

PC: Image is by Ricardo Rivas

Please rate + review us on Spotify! Follow us on Instagram @xeno_pod and subscribe at xenocast.org.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.