Join us for a special launch of Sarah Thomas’ ecological memoir The Raven’s Nest, published in July by Atlantic Books.
The Raven’s Nest is a profoundly moving meditation on place, identity, and how we might live in an era of environmental disruption, set in Iceland’s otherwordly Westfjords.
Now based in Galloway, Sarah visited Iceland as an anthropologist and filmmaker in 2008. An immediate love for the country and for Bjarni, a man she met there, turned a week-long stay into a transformative half-decade, one which radically altered Sarah’s understanding of herself and of the living world.
She embarked on a relationship not only with Bjarni, but with the light, the language, and the old wooden house they made their home. She found a place where the midwinter full moon reflected by snow can be brighter than daylight, where the earth can tremor at any time, and where the word for echo – bergmál – translates as ‘the language of the mountain’. In the midst of crisis both personal and planetary, as her marriage fell apart, Sarah found inspiration in the artistry of a raven’s nest: a home which persists through breaking and reweaving – over and over.