The Snag

Auteur

Tessa McWatt is the author of seven novels and two books for young people. Her fiction has been nominated for the Governor General's Award, the City of Toronto Book Awards, the OCM Bocas Prize, and the Society of Authors' Volcano Prize. She is one of the winners of the Eccles British Library Award 2018, for her memoir:

Shame on Me: an anatomy of race and belonging, which won the Bocas Prize for Non-Fiction 2020 and was shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Prize and the Governor General's Award. She has been a resident at the Sacatar Institute in Brazil and the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center. Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, she is also a librettist, and works on interdisciplinary projects and community-based life writing. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Résumé

Every day, we hear about and experience griefs, large and small, in our families, friendships, communities, and worldwide. The grief of a loved one passing. The grief of a way of life ceasing to exist. The grief of global pandemic, war, climate collapse.

In The Snag, the acclaimed author of Shame On Me, Tessa McWatt, takes on personal and collective grief, and climate change, in her much-anticipated second nonfiction book.

As her mother's dementia advances and it becomes apparent that she can no longer live independently, Tessa considers griefs personal and political, and finds solace in trees. She asks: How do we grieve? And: What can we learn from nature and those whose communities are rooted in nature about how to grieve and how to live?

From the newest seedling, to the oldest snag in the forest, there is meaning to be found in every stage of a tree's life, all of which contribute to a thriving forest community; it is in this metaphor that Tessa begins to find answers to her questions about how to live (for each other), how to grieve (radically), and how to die (with love and connection).

The Snag is an essential book about living and dancing and singing and praying, even in the face of unimaginable sadness, and in this way, growing together and supporting one another, like the trees in the forest.

This book was written in collaboration with the Land Body Ecologies project, a transdisciplinary network and research project funded by the Wellcome Trust between 20212023.