Jay Griffiths

Jay Griffiths was born in Manchester and studied English Literature at Oxford University. She spent a couple of years living in a shed on the outskirts of Epping Forest but for many years she has been based in Wales. The first book she wrote was Anarchipelago, a story about the British anti-roads protests. The second was Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time, a manifesto for time and against clocks. It explores the political nature of time, and illustrates some of the diverse ways in which indigenous cultures perceive time. It is a polemic against the play-less, life-denying ways in which modernity sees time.

Her next book - Wild: An Elemental Journey - took seven years to research and write. An evocation of the songlines of the earth, it is the result of long journeys among indigenous cultures, including staying with Amazonian shamans and Inuit people, visiting sea gypsies and staying with the freedom fighters of West Papua. It explores the words and meanings which shape ideas of wildness, arguing that wildness is intrinsic to the health of the human spirit. It is about necessary nomadism and the truant heart.

She has written for the Guardian’s comment pages and feature pages and is a regular columnist for Orion magazine and a frequent contributor to The Idler. 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.

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 it was cited as ‘cleverness in the service of genius’.

Jay will be appearing on the Five Dials Liberty stage.