Books & Writers · The Creative Process The Creative Process

“I still do workshops on oppression generally, but at this point, I've been focusing mostly on a workshop that's called Reclaiming Nature Writing, which has been a workshop that takes the idea of nature writing, which at least in the US has always been seen as a predominantly white male field and looks at writers that have existed for hundreds of years that have always been writing about nature but have maybe not been considered nature writers by the field generally."

Amanda E. Machado is a writer, public speaker and facilitator whose work explores how race, gender, sexuality, and power affect the way we travel and experience the outdoors. She has written and facilitated on topics of social justice and adventure and lived in Cape Town, Havana, Mexico City, Berlin, Rio de Janeiro, and other cities. She has been published in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Guardian, New York Times, NPR, and other publications. She is also the founder of Reclaiming Nature Writing, a multi-week online workshop that expands how we tell stories about nature in a way that considers ancestry, colonization, migration trauma, and other issues.

“I'm big on if you ban a book that kids love, I'm probably going to come and adapt it. I'm probably going to come after it because adults fail children all the time. Because we are afraid of their feelings. We are afraid of what they can get themselves into until it's too late. And we're avoidant as a culture with them. And we've also left them a pretty screwed-up world where they're living in a terrible state of anxiety. They've got lockdown drills in kindergarten. They don't know if a gunman is going to walk into their school. And they've got so many images coming at them. good and bad."

Joy Gorman Wettels is the founder of Joy Coalition, an impact producing venture with a focus on creating purpose-driven film and television content for a global audience. She executive-produced the newly-released UnPrisoned, and is currently working on a multi-part storytelling ecosystem inspired by landmark civil rights documentary Eyes on the Prize. Her body of work includes, notably, the critically acclaimed series Home Before Dark, the influential 13 Reasons Why, created by Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning playwright Brian Yorkey and directed by Oscar-winner Tom McCarthy (Spotlight).

“I definitely believe we need a Global Green New Deal which will involve massive structural de-growth of the fashion industry. But as you say, we have to make sure that we don't just repeat the sacrifice zones that we are seeing anyway with climate change, whereby we say to the 4 million garment workers in Bangladesh. ‘Okay. You know, it is been great. You've made several billion bits of clothing, but we are off now and, you know, you have no more jobs and no more no infrastructure.’ So yeah, it has to be a just transition. But I think it's in many ways a bit of an exciting opportunity whereby we could really overturn this global export economy.”

Tansy E. Hoskins is an award winning author and journalist who investigates the global fashion industry. She’s the author of The Anti-Capitalist Book Of Fashion, Foot Work, and Stitched Up. This work has taken her to Bangladesh, India, North Macedonia, and to the Topshop warehouses in Solihull.