Through twenty-five pieces of prose, poetry, and artwork, this new anthology offers a vision of nature that encompasses the close up, the microscopic, and the vast. From a single falling raindrop to the enormity of the north wind, this is nature experienced wholly and acutely. Moving Mountains is not about overcoming or conquering, but about living with and connecting, shifting the reader’s attention to the things easily overlooked by those who move through the world untroubled by the body that carries them.

Moving Mountains has been developed over the last three years. An Arts Council England award in 2021 enabled the commissioning of contributors, and the collection has now been published by Footnote Press. Described as ‘exquisite’, this is a first-of-its-kind collection of nature writing by disabled authors and writers who live with chronic illness. Within a genre typically filled with determined physical accomplishments and dexterity, Moving Mountains instead offers up a diverse experience from the well-trodden narratives of nature writing, of climbing mountains and trekking off-road trails. It is a collection of experiences of embodied connections, engagements with the environment around us and the communities we belong to. It raises pertinent issues regarding the climate crisis and the escalating rise in chronic illness, and the interrelation of both of these. 

As well as the editor being a creative local to Hastings, so are three of the contributors. Poet Dillon Jaxx, and artists Isobel Anderson and Lorna Crabbe, all have work included in Moving Mountains. Other contributors range from as far away as Indonesia, North America, and Singapore, but also hail from places covering the length of England and Scotland, from Hastings to Shetland. This is an international book with a wide reach and a local core.