About me – my creative journey – hiraeth – and the sea.
I was born in Bath, UK, in 1967 and grew up on the outskirts of the city. For as long as I can remember, I have had a fascination with animals. I was the sort of child that looked for bugs and birds in the garden and dug for fossils in the soil. I vividly remember standing in front of an exhibit in a museum. It was a large, peculiar bird, about the same height as me at the time, stuffed and stuck behind glass – a dodo – made extinct by man. I remember feeling a sense of profound loss for a creature I would never have chance to see. I couldn’t express that feeling at the time, but it stayed with me, that deep sadness for something forever gone.
At school, I loved drawing and painting and creating stories, however, I struggled with dyslexia and never dreamed I could be a writer.
I trained to become a vet, and worked in the UK and abroad, often feeling pulled to wilder places, especially to the sea. Being a vet gave me the unique privilege of hearing first-hand how important animals are in people’s lives. From pets to wild animals, these connections form the basis of many of my stories.
I settled in Somerset to bring up our young family. Reading to my children rekindled my love of storytelling. I gained an MA in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University, where I wrote Sky Hawk, a story about children connected to each other across thousands of miles by the migration of an osprey.
Sky Hawk, was published in 2011 to critical acclaim. Through the generosity of the UK and international publishers of Sky Hawk, a satellite tag was funded as part of ongoing research to follow the migration of an osprey. Children from across the world were invited to follow its progress. This allowed me to see just how powerful children’s books could be to raise awareness and unite people across different countries to protect the wild.
Since then, I have written many award-winning novels for young people and contributed to anthologies and short stories. I speak at schools, and at literary and conservation festivals and conferences.
I founded the Young Wild Writer Competition in association with Hen Harrier Action, to give young people a voice to speak up for wildlife. Some of the winners’ work has been pivotal in local change.
I believe that grassroots campaigning is fundamental to the change we need to see in the world. We have the science to fully comprehend the consequences of anthropogenic climate change and biodiversity loss. What political leaders lack, in both local and global governance, is the will to change. We can only protect something if we care deeply enough to save it. The arts are the essential key to change. The arts make us human. They make us care.
After 25 years in Somerset, I moved with my family to Pembrokeshire on the far west tip of Wales. We were drawn back to the sea and the Welsh landscape, where we are restoring traditional hay meadows and Atlantic rainforest. Perhaps the move was driven by a deep longing for something missing. Hiraeth is a unique Welsh word, with no direct translation. It is often described as a heartache, or a homesickness tinged with grief and longing.
For me, hiraeth is the feeling I first experienced as a child when I saw that dodo – a heartache for what we are losing and what we have lost from our landscapes and seascapes. In my lifetime we have lost over 70% of the world’s wildlife. I write to raise the questions, and to be a part of the answer, and part of the change. With enough voices, I believe we can become a force so powerful to help restore the extraordinary diversity and abundance of life on this small blue-green planet of Earth, that we all call home.
© Gill Lewis