Nature Writing
JC Niala’s nature writing is reflective and contemplative, blending elements of memoir, cultural history, and environmental observation. She is interested in exploring the complexities of human relationships with nature, including the impact of cultural perspectives and historical events on our understanding of the natural world.
Her writing also explores themes of boundaries and belonging, both in the context of nature and human society. She analyses how these concepts influence our interactions with the environment, drawing parallels between the natural world and human experiences of migration, identity, and displacement.
Her nature writing style is introspective, poetic, and textured, inviting readers to contemplate the intricate tapestry of connections between humans, nature, and memory. Her essay Fieldnotes from an African Anthropologist was awarded the Frank Allen Bullock Prize by St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford in 2020. In 2022, Robert Macfarlane described her piece Imagemory as a ‘beautiful and moving essay on loss, deep time and the bright present’. Her afterword to the Crouch and Ward classic book ‘The Allotment’ entitled ‘Banal Utopia’ was published in 2023.
The New Eden: Wildlife in the City and Discovering Our Shared Home
JC’s nature writing debut ‘The New Eden: Wildlife in the City and Discovering Our Shared Home’ was published by Gaia (Octopus Books, Hachette) in 2026 and is also available as an audiobook.
Synopsis
While it’s easy to think of the city as a human domain – a place that belongs to us alone – the reality is that nature is always present, always finding ways to thrive, even in the most unexpected places.
From the remarkable adaptation of birds to the fearless resilience of mammals, there are stories from across the globe that attest to the growing realisation that nature is abundant in our cities – and it is time to discover a new way of living with it.
Through her experience of cities, from London to Nairobi, San Francisco to New Delhi, anthropologist JC Niala is perfectly placed to offer a luminous exploration of city life – and ask what it means to live with nature rather than simply in it.
Combining memoir, social history, and cultural commentary, JC celebrates nature in our cities and, by doing so, offers a powerful vision of the future where we can all belong.
Reviews
‘A nuanced invitation to see the city as a place of wild co-existence and possibility.‘
OLIVIA LAING‘Meticulously researched and elegantly written’
VICTORIA BENNETT
Louise Kenward, editor of MOVING MOUNTAINS‘The New Eden illustrates how we are all integral and entangled, and each of us with the capacity for something better, as we develop a more cohesive understanding of the natural world, and our role within it.’
Jay Griffiths, author of HOW ANIMALS HEAL US‘Original, profound and wise, this book is rich with knowledge and vitality’
Natasha Carthew, author of UNDERCURRENT
Seamlessly combines the intricacies of the personal with an overarching world view of a natural world that is all around us - a love letter to nature but not the kind seen at a distance, but that which exists in kissing distance.
Nicola Chester, author of ON GALLOWS DOWNProfound, joyful, quietly radical and moving, The New Eden challenges the colonial inheritance of what it means to belong to and care for the earth we are all born onto, and turns us in a new and hopeful direction.
Alycia Pirmohamed, poetThe New Eden is both wonderfully lyrical and precise, woven with poetic encounters and feminist narratives of resistance. It reminds us that 'nature will thrive in the most unexpected places,' and that the divide between what we perceive as wild and urban is porous, with nature achieving a harmonious balance that is also reflected in Niala's stunning writing itself.
Alycia Pirmohamed, poet
If you are specifically interested in JC’s writing on allotments. Her essay on women and allotments is coming out in the paperback version of This Allotment: Stories of Growing, Eating and Nurturing Edited by Sarah Rigby it also features wonderful writers including Olia Hercules,
