About

Sara Hudston:

I am a writer, editor and activist living in the west country who writes about the spirit of place and the living world. I write fiction, essays, creative non-fiction and critical reviews for many journals and publications. Once a month I contribute to The Guardian’s Country Diary, where I focus on either West Dorset or Exmoor.

I have recently become commissioning editor at Hazel Press, a small, independent publisher producing short books of poetry, essays and fiction focusing on the environment with a feminist perspective. I think that Hazel is the UK’s most exciting and eco-aware publisher.

I am currently researching a book about the landscape of Exmoor and the life of writer and artist Hope Bourne, who lived for many years in a dilapidated caravan on a remote part of the moor.

I review nature writing and memoir for the TLS and have contributed to a number of collaborative projects, including Nightjar Nights from the University of Leeds’ Landlines nature writing project, and the BTO’s first Red Sixty Seven book on the UK’s red-listed bird species. In October 2022 I was writer in residence alongside poet Katrina Naomi at Alfoxden Park on the Quantocks, where the Wordsworths lived for a year in the full-bloom of their friendship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Since 2018 I have supported Extinction Rebellion. I was one of the speakers who gave the Heading for Extinction talk and was part of the editorial panel that writes and updates the talk.

In 2020/21 I took a one-year MA in mythology and oral narrative at Dartington Arts School with Martin Shaw of the Westcountry School of Myth.

Writing for Dark Mountain has informed much of my work. I have pieces on the project website and in three of the printed anthologies.

(PS, my daughter Dorothy would like me to credit her for taking this photo of me in Wistman’s Wood on Dartmoor. Thanks love!)