The Richard Jefferies Society has awarded their annual award for best nature writing to Dr Michael Malay for his book Late Light, published earlier this year by Manila Press. The Chair of the judging panel, Professor Barry Sloan, noted that "Against the background of a strong shortlist, this enquiring, thoughtful and moving work, strongly grounded in the writer’s awareness of the interconnections between human life, culture and politics, and the natural world around us, impressed the judges as a highly enjoyable book which deserves a wide audience."

'I’m delighted to be given this award,' Dr Malay writes, 'and especially honoured to be associated with the name of Richard Jefferies.'

I first encountered Jefferies’ work in 2009, not long after I arrived in England, and the experience of reading Nature Near London, alongside other ‘nature’ books pressed into my hands by university teachers, opened my eyes to a whole new way of seeing, relating and belonging to the landscape. That year, I also had the fortune of falling in with a group of amateur naturalists—birders, botanists, mycologists—and I mention this because, at the heart of Late Light, is a concern with gifts and gift-giving, as well as the vast networks of care, both human and nonhuman, that sustain and nourish us. It’s therefore a pleasure to look back at some of the roads that have led to this book, and to realise how lucky I’ve been with the company that I’ve had; and a joy to realise, too, that Jefferies has been a small part of that journey, a ghostly yet perennially up-to-date guide to that outdoors realm of ‘sunlight and pure wind’. 

You can find more information on Dr Malay and his teaching here.