Stories of Survival

Celebrating Threatened Species

Join botanist and science writer Dr Alexandra Davey, author of World of Plants: Stories of Survival, and poet Jen Hadfield for a creative writing workshop.

True stories of loss, resilience and restoration will inspire your own creative responses to species in the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh’s Living Collection.

No experience necessary.

This workshop will take place on Zoom and you will be sent a link to join online in advance of the event.

If you have any access requirements or questions relating to this workshop, please do not hesitate to email aporteous@rbge.org.uk

Part of Book Week Scotland 2021.

Biographies:

Dr Alexandra Davey is a botanist and science writer at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. She has worked on subjects ranging from fossilized pollen to forest conservation, and in countries including Bolivia, Cambodia, China and Congo. She is now the Garden’s Science Policy Officer, responsible for maximising the impact of its research and conservation activities to combat the biodiversity and climate crises. She lives in beautiful East Lothian with her young family and two very greedy guinea pigs.

Jen Hadfield's fourth poetry collection The Stone Age explores neurodiversity and was published by Picador in March 2021. She is also working on Storm Pegs, a collection of essays about Shetland, where she lives. Passionately involved with the wild world, she uses poetry, lyrical essay and occasionally sculpture in cast porcelain, to share her intense experience of the here-and-now. Her work has gathered numerous awards, including the 2008 T.S.Eliot Prize for her second collection, Nigh-No-Place, (Bloodaxe). She has performed her work internationally, attending festivals and residencies in – amongst other countries - Iraq, New Zealand and Canada. She is a Creative Writing Teaching Fellow at Glasgow University and is building a house in Shetland, increasingly rapidly.