Abil will talk about her award-winning book, And So I Roar, a novel linking climate impacts with gender and social justice in rural Nigeria, and how fiction is one of the best ways to bring home the devastating and sometimes grossly unfair effects of environmental degradation.

In 2023 Abi founded the Louding Voice Foundation to support scholarships and empowerment programmes for women and girls in underserved Nigerian communities.

For full details and to book tickets visit easustain.com.

We are delighted to be co-presenting this event with EA Sustain – the biennial festival about Environment, Culture & Entrepreneurship – taking place at Firstsite, Colchester on Saturday 28 March.

The post New event announcement: Abi Daré appeared first on Essex Book Festival.

The question is, have you got your ticket to hear winner Abi Daré talking about And So I Roar at Grays Library in Thurrock on Tuesday 3rd June?

The novel explores the lives of women and girls in rural Nigeria as they navigate the devastating impacts of environmental collapse in a part of the world where families are losing their homes, where communities are being forced to adapt in unexpected ways, all of which rarely makes the news.

‘A book of real energy and passion which both horrifies and entertains with a cast of compelling characters, a story of how the climate crisis can provoke social crisis where often women and children are the victims. Despite the tragedy, Abi Daré holds faith in the strength of individuals and relationships, and her hopefulness leaves us inspired.’

Climate Fiction Prize Chair, Madeleine Bunting

Another book causing quite the stir is Chloe Dalton’s Raising Hare – an instant Sunday Times and New York Times Bestseller, short-listed for The Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction 2025, short-listed for the British Book Awards’ Book of the Year 2025, short-listed for Waterstones Book of the Year, and a Critics’ Best Books pick for The Times, Financial Times, Guardian, Spectator and iNews.

We are beyond pleased to be co-hosting an author event with Chloe Dalton and her fellow nature-writer James Canton as part of EA Festival at Hedingham Castle on Saturday 14th June. James Canton’s fabulous new book Renaturing is also causing more than a ripple or two in the world of nature-writing.

Other Nature and Environment festival events include the launch of Radical Islands on Mersea Island on 1st June featuring Jules Pretty and Ken Worpole, Wildlife Detectives at the Wild Space (8th June, Maldon), Wild Swim and Write Workshop: Sense the Estuary, in partnership with the Federation of Essex Women’s Institutes and Metal as part of Essex Writers House (21st June, Southend), and Batty About Bats with the National Trust (21st June: Rainham Hall).

The post Nature and the Environment Playing Leading Role This June appeared first on Essex Book Festival.

Saturday 28 March 2026, 10.00am – 10.45am

Firstsite, Colchester – part of EA Sustain

Abi Daré, the winner of the inaugural Climate Fiction Prize (2025) for And So I Roar – a novel that shows with unusual force how climate change is never “just” environmental, but inseparable from justice, power, education, and actual human lives.

In And So I Roar, Daré shows how environmental breakdown is rarely experienced as an abstract crisis. Instead, its consequences are absorbed by those with the least power, who are then blamed and punished for systemic failures they did not create. The novel follows a young girl accused of “crimes” that are, in reality, the outcome of climate disruption, poverty, and entrenched social injustice.

This conversation explores why fiction can be such an effective way of opening dialogue around climate change: not because it offers easy solutions, but because it exposes how responsibility is displaced, how power operates, and how environmental harm is lived at the most personal level.

This event is part of EA Sustain – The biennial festival about Environment, Culture & Entrepreneurship.

In partnership with EA Festival

The post Humanising Climate Change – EA Sustain appeared first on Essex Book Festival.