Leaving her garden to the mercy of the slugs, award-winning writer Alys Fowler set out in an inflatable kayak to explore Birmingham's canal network, full of little-used waterways where huge pike skulk and kingfishers dart.Her book is about noticing the wild everywhere and what it means to see beauty where you least expect it. What happens when someone who has learned to observe her external world in such detail decides to examine her internal world with the same care?Beauti...

Tom fell in love with Alice the moment he saw her. He realises that being with her will not be easy, but she is a force of nature, a burst of sunlight in his otherwise ordinary world.Some people might look at Alice and think she has everything, but Alice knows she is not like other women. Her life is complicated, unpredictable, difficult. Alice does not like pity. All she wants to do, has ever wanted to do, is sing.Alice has been told not t...

'Why do I like bogs so much? I think it is because I feel very at home with them, I think this has something to do with my queerness and their queer nature as a space.'The value of peat bogs as a natural resource and haven of biodiversity is undisputed, yet few of us have been lucky enough to experience their beauty and richness. In Peatlands, Wainwright Prize-shortlisted author Alys Fowler calls for us to sink deep into the dark, black soils of these rugg...