Jay
Griffiths

Jay Griffiths was born in Manchester and studied English Literature at Oxford University. She is an award-winning British writer and author of non-fiction works ‘Wild: An Elemental Journey’, ‘Kith: The Riddle of the Childscape, and ‘Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time.’ Her fiction includes ‘Anarchipelago’ and ‘A Love Letter from a Stray Moon,’ which is partly about Frida Kahlo but which is also an allegory of climate change.

‘Wild’ was the winner of the inaugural Orion Book Award and was shortlisted for the Orwell prize and for the World Book Day award. ‘Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time’ won the Barnes and Noble ‘Discover’ award for the best new non-fiction writer to be published in the USA, 2003, for which her book was cited as ‘cleverness in the service of genius’.

She has written for the Guardian’s comment pages and is now a regular columnist for Orion magazine. She has also written for The Observer, the Ecologist, and the London Review of Books. She has broadcast widely on BBC radio, including Start the Week and Woman’s Hour, and the World Service, and has several times been a guest on Phillip Adams’ Late Night Live in Australia.

Her non-fiction work on climate change includes a column for the Guardian and Orion magazine on the issue of academic expertise, and also on the issue of mutability. (Articles attached.) She has also spoken at the British Council on climate change and the arts, having attended several Tipping Point conferences.

Her work explores issues of culture, politics, psychology and she is known for her interest in many different societies, and also in the art of communication itself.