Esther Woolfson Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Esther Woolfson Biography

Esther Woolfson was brought up in Glasgow and studied Chinese at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Edinburgh University. Her critically acclaimed short stories have appeared in many anthologies including 'New Writing Scotland' and several volumes of 'Scottish Short Stories' and have been read on Radio 4. Her short story 'Eggshells' won a V.S. Pritchett award in 2014.

Esther took part in an Artists' Residency at Aberdeen University's Centre for Environmental Sustainability. She gave a paper on the relationship between the arts and science, in which she examined the breaking-down of the traditional separation between the disciplines. She was Writer in Residence at Kielder as part of the Hexham Book Festival in 2012.

Her book on natural history, Corvus—A Life With Birds, was Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4. This was followed by Field Notes From a Hidden City (2014), where Esther wrote about the relationship between the urban and the 'wild', between the people who live in cities and the most common species who share our living space, touching on themes of biology, climate change, phenology and the ethics of human-animal relations. The book was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize and the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize.

In her new book, published in 2020, Between Light and Storm—How We Live With Other Species, she traces the historic religious and philosophical origins of our attitudes towards animals, birds and insects and examines their influence on every area of human life from art to hunting, from animal experimentation and industrial slaughter to the effects of tradition on our treatment of animals. She asks questions about love and cruelty, and about where the lines that separate species may lie.

Esther Woolfson's website

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