When you experience abuse it can close you off from everything, but healing comes from keeping open to the world and to other people. Walking and writing have helped me bear the seemingly unbearable.

During the pandemic, many of us who are lucky enough to live close to nature have embraced the joys and consolations of walking in the wild like never before.

Anita Sethi has been an instinctive lover of the natural world since her inner-city Manchester childhood. So after suffering a horrific race hate crime on a train in 2019, she re-embraced the call of the wild by walking the Pennine Way, in an act both of recovery and of reclamation after a racist had told her to “go back home where you belong”.

We’re delighted to welcome Anita to Stroud Book Festival to discuss how walking and writing about walking have both helped her heal, and empowered her to speak out about societal injustice. It’s a journey both mental and physical she writes about eloquently in her debut book, “I Belong Here”: a powerful blend of memoir, nature writing and activism, which was shortlisted for the 2021 Wainwright Prize for UK Nature Writing.

Chaired by Caroline Sanderson

Venue: Subscription Rooms, Stroud

Tickets: £10