‘A wry and open-minded interrogation of human interventions in the landscape’ – Richard Mabey

James Canton writes for the Guardian, the TLS and Caught by the River. He is Director of Wild Writing at the University of Essex, teaching the ‘Wild Writing: Literature, Landscape and the Environment’ MA since its inception in 2009. His books include Out of Essex: Re-Imagining a Literary Landscape (2013); Ancient Wonderings: Journeys into Prehistoric Britain (2017); The Oak Papers (2020) and Grounded (2023). His work focuses on the relationship between humans and the natural world in all its diversity. Renaturing (2025) is based on his experience of bringing new wildlife to his own two acre plot of land. He investigates inspiring ways of democratising rewilding, demonstrating how we can all make positive changes to restore our natural environment.