Author Description

Plant Life, Standard Edition with colour cover and black & white interior Is there something strange about that person with a hundred house plants stacked high all around? Or something enviable? Do plant people know something that others don’t? A walk in the quiet forest can be rejuvenating. A time lapse video of a house plant shows what could be mistaken for a house pet. The electrical signals of a tree play a beautiful symphony, which we pass by without ever hearing. This volume of the London Reader digs deep into the roots that bind us to our house plants, our leafy neighbours, the distant forests, and indeed the wider world. Our close relationship with plants opens up in this volume thanks to short stories, first-hand accounts, art, and poetry by Liz Ziemska, Leon Coleman, smintz, Steve Zisson, Rebecca Burton, Ulrike Durán Bravo, X.H. Collins, Toshiya Kamei, AN Grace, Fiona Pearson, Dominic Walker, John Gifford, Matt Gulley, Megan Kiekel Anderson, Christa Fairbrother, Gabriel Awuah Mainoo, Liz K Miller, and Daina Daugaviete. Interviews with Vanessa Diffenbaugh, author of the New York Times bestselling novel The Language of Flowers, and Hope Jahren, geobiologist and author of Lab Girl and The Story of More, ask about our relationships with plants and what plants can tell us both about ourselves and about the world we share with them. The authors and artists in this volume reach out to touch the leaves, flowers, and prickly spines all around. They breathe in the jungle-thick and humid breath of plant life. And they ask, what are our lives like amongst plants—and more importantly, what would we be without them? Charitable Cause Ten percent of the revenue from Plant Life supports the charity Youth Villages. Find out more inside the issue. About the London Reader The London Reader brings you a diverse range of thought-provoking voices in contemporary creative writing. Featuring both up-and-coming and established authors, the fiction, creat