About

Join us for a talk with climate fiction author Deborah Tomkins to chat about her latest releases ,'The Wilder Path' (Winner of the Virginia Prize for Fiction 2024) and 'Aerth' (Winner of the Weatherglass Inaugural Novella Award 2024 chosen by Ali Smith)

Deborah will be interviewed by local Green party councillor Andree Frieze followed by a Q&A with the audience!

This event is part of Feminist Book Fortnight 2025.

About The Wilder Path:

Caught between the cliffs and an unforgiving storm, Rosalie's fight for survival becomes a reckoning with her troubled past. Trapped in a cave overlooking the roiling sea, the climate activist grapples with the weight of heartbreak, her own losses, and the fractured bond with the son she still senses, like a whisper in the wind. As the injured bird by her side mirrors her struggles, Rosalie is forced to confront the storms within, as much as those outside. With time slipping through her fingers and danger closing in, she faces the ultimate question: can she find a way back—not just to safety, but to herself?

REVIEW

"A beautiful book. Tender, twisting and turning. Life seen through the eyes of a mother haunted. So beautifully written and full of surprises. " ***** - Debbie Jaggers, Netgalley reviewer

 

About Aerth:

Magnus lives on Aerth, which is currently moving into an Ice Age, with a strange virus limiting the population. When the planet Urth is discovered, he vows to become an astronaut and travel there, but on arriving he finds it hot, crowded, corrupt and violent, despite it being initially welcoming. Slowly Magnus realises he will not find what he's looking for, but there seems no way back.

Ali Smith says: 'What planet are we on? Can we leave? Does it mean we can never go home again if we do? What does a phrase like worlds apart really mean? Deep-forged, witty and resonant, this dimensionally stunning novella deals with dystopia and hope in a way that reveals them as profoundly related. A work of real energy and narrative grip, brilliantly earthy and airy at once, it blasts open a reader's past/future consciousness and taps into literary antecedents as disparate as Hardy and Atwood. Funny, terrifying, humane, this is a thrilling journey in a story the size of a planet – no, the size of several, all of them altogether strange and uncannily familiar.'

REVIEWS

"This novella [Aerth] , so concisely written, is a triumph: both an intelligent sci-fi thriller and a thought-provoking parable." – Luke Kennard, The Daily Telegraph

"Moving and thought-provoking, this is a memorable debut from a writer to watch." – Lisa Tuttle, The Guardian

About Deborah Tomkins:

Deborah is an award-winning author of fiction, short stories and flash fiction. Her novel 'The Wilder Path' won the Virginia Prize for Fiction 2024 and her novella 'Aerth' won the inaugural Weatherglass Books Novella award in 2024.

Her work has also been long listed for the Mslexia Prize (2015), the Eludia Award (2020), the Bath Novella-in-Flash Award (2018, 2019). Shortlists include the Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature (2018), the Yeovil Prize (2019), the Sandy River Novella Award (2020).

In 2017 she founded Bristol Climate Writers, a local network of writers of all genres, from poets to travel writers, novelists to journalists. She is also a member of ClimateCultures, an extraordinary worldwide network of artists and scientists.

About Andree Frieze:

Experienced leader, communicator, researcher, networker and campaigner with a wide-ranging career in politics, local government, civil service, publishing and charities. She specialises in transport, climate change, housing and planning.
Councillor for the London Borough of Richmond, Leader of the Opposition, previously Chair of Audit Committee, currently sitting on Transport & Air Quality, Regulatory and Planning Committees.

About Feminist Book Fortnight:

Feminist Book Fortnight (FBF) is a bookseller-led offering established in the early 1980s as a promotion of feminist publishing and thought by independent bookshops around the U.K. and Ireland (and even occasionally Italy!).

Over the years events have been held with names like Maya Angelou, Carol Ann Duffy, Nawal el Saadawi, Margaret Atwood, Deborah Levy, and many others. We also want to celebrate the explosion in new feminist publishing, work by the likes of Lola Olufemi, Sarah Ahmed, Laura Bates, Mary Beard, and Rebecca Solnit has entered the mainstream and populated bestseller lists.

FBF has consistently prioritised a sense of regionalism, grassroots community, class conscious, and increasingly anti-racist, decolonial, and Queer consciousness. It is a space to encourage a plurality of feminisms.

It was relaunched in 2018 by a group of radical and independent bookshops around the UK and Ireland. We drew our inspiration from the Feminist Book Fortnights run nationally in the 1980s. Participating bookshops reported lots of full events and a "thirst" for discussion of feminist issues as well as celebration of feminist achievements. We did the same in 2019, expanding the range of venues involved to include some of the feminist libraries as well as independent bookshops.

In 2019 Feminist Book Fortnight ran from Saturday 4th May to Saturday 18th May. 50 bookshops took part as well as 3 of the feminist libraries. To find out if your local bookstore is taking part in 2025, click on Participating Bookshops.