Books by Jay Griffiths

Jay Griffiths describes an extraordinary odyssey, courageous and sometimes dangerous, to wildernesses of earth and ice, water and fire. A poetic consideration of the tender connection between human society and wild lands, Wild is by turns funny, touching and harrowing. It is also a journey into that greatest of uncharted lands - wild mind - as Griffiths explores the words and meanings which shape our ideas and our experience of our own wildness. Part travelogue, part manifesto, this is a one-of-a-kind book from a one-of-a-kind author.

This new book of essays from the author of Wild tracks the turning light of the day and seasons, an almanac of the turning times, reflecting on the misunderstood Goddess, Nemesis.

A stark and lyrical account of the psyche in crisis from the author of KithTristimania tells the story of a devastating year-long episode of manic depression, culminating in a long solo pilgrimage across Spain. Recording the experience of mania as has rarely been done before, Jay Griffiths shows how the condition is at once terrifying and also profoundly creative, both tricking and treating the psyche. An intimate and raw journey, Tristimania illuminates something of the universal human spirit.

Kith is Jay Griffiths's passionate examination of what it means to be a child.While travelling the world in order to write her award-winning book Wild, Jay Griffiths became increasingly aware of the huge differences in how childhood is experienced in various cultures. One central riddle, in particular, captured her imagination: Why are so many children in Euro-American cultures unhappy -- and why is it that children in many traditional cultures seem happier? In Kith, Jay Griffiths explores these questions and many more. Moving from communities in West Papua and the Arctic to the ostracised young people of contemporary Britain, she asks why we have enclosed our children in a consumerist cornucopia but denied them the freedoms of space, time and deep play. She uses history, philosophy, language and literature to illustrate children's affinity for the natural world and the essential quest element of childhood.Kith is Jay Griffiths' impassioned, illuminating analysis of a universal rite of passage and an antidote to books such as Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. In its urgent defence of the rights and needs of every child, it is a journey into the heart of human experience.'Kith could have been written by no-one but Jay Griffiths. It is ablaze with her love of the physical world and her passionate moral sense that goodness and a true relation with nature are intimately connected. She has the same visionary understanding of childhood that we find in Blake and Wordsworth, and John Clare would have read her with delight. Her work isn't just good -- it's necessary' Philip Pullman 'Jay Griffiths writes with such richness and mischief about the one thing that could truly save the world: its children' KT Tunstall'An impassioned, visionary plea to restore to our children the spirit of adventure, freedom and closeness to nature that is their birthright. We must hear it and act on it before it is too late' Iain McGilchristJay Griffiths is the author of Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time; Wild: An Elemental Journey; and A Love Letter from a Stray Moon, a novella about the life of Frida Kahlo. She is the winner of the inaugural Orion Book Award and of the Barnes & Noble Discover Award for the best new non-fiction writer to be published in the USA. She has also been shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and the World Book Day award.

'Anarchipelago' tells the semi-fictional tale of the Newbury Road protest camp, its characters and the politics around the events.