This story was written while I was the Northern Short Story Festival’s Writer in Residence at Middleton Park in Leeds.

Something is wrong in the Robert Macfarlane Extended Universe.

When the most prestigious prize in nature writing appears unable or unwilling to recognise and reward good writing for its own sake, the perception of nature writing as literature is diminished.

Even before this spring is done with we can say that the genre is unlikely to furnish a richer reading experience than Greenery this year.

This is a novel that surprised me first by existing and then by being not only funny – and it is very funny – but also strangely, desperately moving.

First published in Unthology 11 (2019).

A square mile of sky is, of course, what you make of it.