The world which men have made isn’t working. Something needs to change. To change the world, we women need first to change ourselves – and then we need to change the stories we tell about who we are. The stories we’ve been living by for the past few centuries – the stories of male superiority, of progress and growth and domination – don’t serve women and they certainly don’t serve the planet. Stories matter, you see.”

My first novel The Long Delirious Burning Blue was described by The Independent on Sunday as ‘Hugely potent. A tribute to the art of storytelling that is itself an affecting and inspiring story’ and by The Scotsman as ‘… powerful (reminiscent of The English Patient), filmic, and achieving the kind of symmetry that novels often aspire to, but rarely reach.’ 'If Women Rose Rooted', a nonfiction book about women, Celtic myth, place and belonging was published in 2016, 'The Enchanted Life' in 2018, and 'Foxfire, Wolfskin and other stories of shapeshifting women' in September 2019.. I feel I received this great collection of stories just at a right time to get grounded and to find my roots in every day life. If you want to learn more about Bookshelves specifically, please read the Bookshelves FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions). What a disappointment. I almost couldn’t finish this. Congratulations to everyone who enjoyed this book, I wish I was you. There is Celtic mythology in every chapter with very little analysis about how the stories relate to the female psyche. Instead, the author takes readers on her personal journey from leaving a stressful corporate job to finding the perfect cottage in the middle of nowhere where she can settle down and just be. Spoiler alert, she is never happy and has to move from remote cottage to remote cottage to remote cottage. This is just a boring memoir and I feel like I’ve been cheated into reading it.Sometimes, if you have grown up in certain ways, a fear of being seen to fail can outweigh the personal cost of continuing to live in impossible circumstances.” We are not separate from this Earth; we are a part of it, whether we fully feel it in our bodies yet or not.” Being from New York City, living in the Bronx, I feared this book would have little to offer me but I was wrong. There is even a section on how to appreciate the earth as a city dweller. The rest of it made me dream of another way of living. I wanted to move to rural Ireland immediately! A life-changing journey from the wasteland of modern society to a place of nourishment and connection.

It was one of those rare times when I felt as if by some means of synchronicity, the right book reached me at exactly the right moment." — Dreaming in Stitches What a wonderful book! I found it so life-giving, filled with beautiful Celtic stories and the stories of women leading healing lives, helping others, rooted in the land. She dreams of a night sky from which the stars have not fled in horror, and of wild-pawed, stinking foxes yapping in a moonlit wood. She can see it; she can almost taste it.”If Women Rose Rooted was added to OnlineBookClub.org by SilenceRecited on May 31, 2022, at 1:00 pm.

My husband David Knowles and I founded literary publisher Two Ravens Press (now under new ownership) in 2006, and in 2012 launched EarthLines Magazine, a full-colour print publication for writing about nature, place and the environment. Who will listen any more to their long, slow songs; who understands the language of stones? Not these people, for sure. They don't even know that the stones are alive.”We are guided deftly on a life-changing journey from the wasteland of modern society to a place of nourishment and connection. Now, I'm cis and I call my reproductive organs my "lady bits," but that's because I'm a lady, and they are my bits. :P If I had different reproductive organs, they would still be my "lady bits," you know? I resonate deeply with the call to be a memory-keeper, a weaver of stories, and a creator, but I want to decouple the idea that the gift of creation is intrinsically mine because I have a uterus, and replace it with the idea that the gift of creation is intrinsically mine because I am human, separate from whatever bits my body bears. Our servers are getting hit pretty hard right now. To continue shopping, enter the characters as they are shown Creation, and so creativity, is the act of giving life, the nourishing and enhancement of life, in whatever way you choose to do it. And when we find our individual creative power, we can harness it and use it to fight for what we care about, to remake the world in our own image. But what might such a creative woman look like, and how might she do such a thing?”