Autumn is a time of transformation. Crisp, clear days mark summer's close and usher in a new season with its rich scents and vivid palette, leaves flaming red and gold by day, bonfires and fireworks lighting up the lengthening nights. There is abundance, as humans and animals make stores for the winter; and there is decay, which gives rise to the next cycle of life.
In prose and poetry from across the British Isles, Autumn captures both the exhilaration and the melancholy of this turning point in the year. Featuring original writing by Horatio Clare, John Lewis-Stempel and Amy Liptrot, classic extracts from the work of Ted Hughes, Helen Macdonald and Nan Shepherd, and a wealth of fresh new voices, Autumn is an evocative celebration of the year's decline – and new beginnings.
Melissa Harrison won the John Muir Trust's 'Wild Writing' Award in 2010 and was a Writer in Residence at Gladstone's Library in 2014. She delivered one of the inaugural Coleridge Lectures as part of Bristol's Festival of Ideas, spoke about landscape and Englishness at The Southbank's Changing Britain festival, and has appeared on Radio 4's Open Book and The Arts Show on Radio 2. She writes for the Nature Notes column in The Times and blogs about nature at Tales of the City. Her first novel, Clay, was published by Bloomsbury in January 2013, followed by At Hawthorn Time in April 2015. She studied English Literature at Oxford.