For the past 20 years Sarah has worked in a communications role for Shropshire Wildlife Trust, soaking up a knowledge of nature from earthstars to Emperor Moths; from Pied Flycatchers to Pine Martens. Regrettably, she has also absorbed much about biodiversity loss, habitat degradation and pollution. Plus, has been infuriated by the failure of those in power to address the crisis and wondered, with heartfelt gladness, at the efforts of people and organisations who, despite huge obstacles, are making waves and bringing positive change for wildlife in a thousand different ways.

Her work at the Wildlife Trust has been to communicate (via a membership magazine, website and on-site interpretation) the fabulousness of nature, the perils it faces and what people can do to help turn things around. And how, by reinvigorating nature, we can renew ourselves too.

Learn about the wondrous Swifts

There has, in recent years, been an explosion of writing about place, landscape and the natural world. But within this blossoming of interest, women’s voices have remained very much in the minority.

Katharine has sifted through the pages of women’s fiction, poetry, household planners, gardening diaries and recipe books to show the multitude of ways in which they have observed the natural world about them, from the fourteenth-century writing of the anchorite Julian of Norwich to the seventeenth-century travel journal of Celia Fiennes; from the keen observations of Emily Brontë to a host of brilliant contemporary voices including Jan Morris, Jackie Kay and Jini Reddy.

For the very first time, she has created a landmark anthology Women in Nature collecting together the work of women, over the centuries and up to the present day, who have written about the natural world in Britain, Ireland and the outlying islands of our archipelago.

Alongside the traditional forms of the travelogue, the walking guide, books on birds, plants and wildlife, embraces alternative modes of seeing and recording that turn the genre on its head.

Katharine is author of The Fish Ladder that was shortlisted for the 2016 Wainwright Prize and selected as a Book of the Year in the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Observer. She has contributed to the Observer, the Guardian, the Telegraph, The Washington Post and Caught by the River Magazine.

What women are saying about nature