Learning From Animals – Adam Weymouth and Jay Griffiths, in conversation with Libreria's Lloyd Sowerbutts

The Libreria Podcast

In this episode we are listening to acclaimed writers Adam Weymouth and Jay Griffiths discuss their new books, Lone Wolf and How Animals Heal Us. which was recorded live in the bookshop.

From Adam Weymouth, the winner of the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, comes Lone Wolf, an epic walk across the Alps in the footsteps of a wolf, throwing unique light on Europe's mountainous hinterlands at a moment of political and environmental change.

In 2011, a young wolf named Slavc set out from Slovenia. Tracked by GPS, he travelled a thousand miles through the Alps, arriving four months later on the Lessinian plateau, north of Verona. There had been no wolves in northern Italy for a century, but here he crossed paths with a female wolf on a walkabout of her own. A decade later and there are more than a hundred wolves back in the area, the result of their remarkable meeting. In Lone Wolf, Weymouth walks Slavc's path, examining the changes facing these wild corners of Europe. Here, the call to rewild meets the urge to preserve culture; nationalism and globalisation pull apart; climate change is radically changing lives; and migrants, too, are on the move. The result is a multifaceted account of a region caught in a

moment of kaleidoscopic flux, from an award-winning writer with a uniquely perceptive eye for detail.

From celebrated author Jay Griffiths comes a unique and heartfelt insight into the healing nature of our relationship with animals. Pet-owners and animal-lovers instinctively know that animals heal. This book offers evidence, drawing widely on scientific discoveries, history, and Indigenous knowledge.

In this original, revelatory and exuberant book, Jay Griffiths draws widely on scientific discoveries, history, and Indigenous knowledge to explore how animals can have a role in every level of healing, from the individual to the collective, guiding us in how we might create societies that are healthier, fairer and kinder. Wolves may be teachers of ethics; monkeys and dogs can object to unfairness and bees take collective decisions. Animals are irresistible medicine for a healthy culture, animating the arts with spectacular vitality and verve, as poetry knows.

Libreria wishes to thank Hutchinson Heinemann and Hamish Hamilton of Penguin Books who helped bring this event together at Libreria.