Anita Sethi was born in Manchester, UK and is an award-winning writer, journalist and broadcaster. She is the author of I Belong Here: a Journey Along the Backbone of Britain  which won a Books Are My Bag Award, was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing, nominated for the RSL Ondaatje Prize, Portico Prize and Great Outdoors Award and selected a best book of the year by the Guardian, Observer, Telegraph, Wanderlust and the Independent who chose it as Best Travelogue of the Year.

I Belong Here has been acclaimed as “a thing of beauty” by the Sunday Times, “a memoir of rare power” by the Guardian, and “an amazing odyssey: inspiring, powerful, encouraging and incredibly brave” by the Independent. It was selected as Stanfords Book of the Month, chosen as a Hottest Book of 2021 by the Guardian and one of 2021’s best travel books by Wanderlust.

She has also been published in the anthologies Women on Nature edited by Katharine Norbury, Common People,  the Seasons nature writing anthology, Seaside Special: Postcards from the Edge, We Mark Your Memory and Solstice Shorts among others.

She has written for national and international newspapers and magazines including the Guardian and Observer, the i paper, Independent, Independent on Sunday, Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph, FT, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, BBC Wildlife, Vogue, New Statesman, Granta, Harpers Bazaar, Times Literary Supplement and BBC Travel among others.  In broadcasting she has appeared as a guest critic and commentator, panellist and co-presenter on several channels including BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 5 Live, the World Service, and ABC Australia.

She is recipient of an RSL Literature Matters Awards.

She was a finalist for Writer of the Year at the Northern Soul Awards and Journalist of the Year at the Asian Media Awards.

She has appeared at Southbank Centre, Edinburgh International Book Festival, Latitude Festival, Green Man Festival, Manchester Literature Festival, Ideas Festival, the British Library, RichMix, Foyles, Daunts, among others, and at many bookshops.  She has participated in festivals and events around the world including in Trinidad & Tobago, Kerala, Nairobi, the Maldives, Erbil (Iraq), and Melbourne, Australia, where she was an International Writer in Residence and Ambassador for Journalism at the Emerging Writers Festival and a writing fellow at the Wheeler Centre of Books, Writing and Ideas.

She has been a  Judge of the British Book Awards, Costa Book Awards, Society of Authors Awards, David Cohen Prize for Literature, and is an Academician in the Folio Academy of the Rathbones Folio Prize. 

She has interviewed leading writers, musicians, artists, politicians and public figures including Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Zadie Smith, Billy Bragg, Robert Macfarlane, Louis de Bernieres, Anne Michaels, Vikram Seth, Ian Rankin, Paul Theroux, Tracey Thorn, Julian Cope, Michael Nyman, Antonio Carluccio and Harriet Harman and has worked as a columnist, critic and feature writer.

Read: Observer interview with Anita Sethi by Lisa O’Kelly

Read: Bookseller interview with Anita Sethi by Caroline Sanderson

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Twitter:  www.twitter.com/anitasethi

Instagram: @anitasethi

Endorsements & Media Reviews

‘For anyone who has ever felt out of place, I Belong Here is a moving and comforting read. For everyone else, it is an education. Punchier and more political than most nature writing, this book is a thing of beauty.’

 – Sunday Times

‘A memoir of rare power’

 – Guardian 

‘Nature’s beauty and wilderness provide a welcome escape from Sethi’s city life and kickstart a healing process as she becomes enveloped in the great outdoors, taking us on an emotional journey at the same time. It’s an amazing odyssey: inspiring, powerful, encouraging and incredibly brave.’

  – Independent 

“Passionate and reflective.” 

  – New Statesman

 ‘A powerful and moving memoir’ 

   – BBC Countryfile Mag

‘Restored and enlivened by the wonders of nature, Anita finds the courage to embrace her vulnerabilities and strengths and to claim her place in the world. Brave and life-affirming book.’

  – S Magazine, Sunday Express

‘A profound read, weaving a sequence of immense concepts into a beautiful, unique and uplifting story about a walk. It’s also a superb study of the wildlife and wildness of the Pennines, and the words that northerners have found to name and describe them. Walkers may recognise many sights within Anita’s journey. But rarely has a writer brought so many strands of social and cultural history into the concept of walking.’

               – Country Walking, Britain’s bestselling walking magazine

‘A masterful example of nature writing’

    – The National 

‘A beautiful, important, and inspiring exploration of our natural world and the author’s sense of belonging within her own country. Thought-provoking and inclusive, this is a wonderful blend of nature and an examination of language, community and friendship. Words dance in her hands, she shows how much language matters, looking at the meanings of words, particularly with regards to nature and emotions. She is so beautifully eloquent. Anita’s words encouraged me to look again, to not just see the face of our natural surroundings but to look in more depth at our natural history and how it exists and connects us. A LoveReading Star Book, I Belong Here is a truly beautiful and important read that I can wholeheartedly recommend’                                             – Liz Robinson, LoveReading

‘I Belong Here is a glorious book, presenting curiosity and exploration as a magnificently defiant response to the brute pettiness of prejudice. It opens the reader’s eyes to triumphant effect.’

         – Matthew D’Ancona, Tortoise

‘Exploring nature writing through such a political and powerful lens is groundbreaking and it was truly a joy to read, even if the content was emotionally challenging at times. Written in incredible prose… Sethi is a powerhouse writer and her work deserves a place on every bookshelf. We can’t wait to see what she creates next.’

         – Nrth Lass

‘I Belong Here is an extraordinary piece of place writing, not least because of Sethi’s talent for describing the Northern landscape that she encounters. Sethi’s nature writing is relatable and accessible…It’s a searingly personal book, but its themes are universal with Sethi considering topics such as loneliness, grief, what it’s like to walk alone as a woman, history, politics, freedom, protest and identity. I felt her power and emotion searing through the page. Not only is I Belong Here an original piece of nature writing, it’s also a moving read. It’s powerful, vulnerable and, above all, truthful. The perfect recipe for a memoir’                                   

 – Northern Soul

 

“I Belong Here is a brilliant, brave and important book, which tells the story of two intertwining journeys: one made on foot and the other made in the heart; one across the rock and rivers of the Pennines, and another traversing the hard ground from hatred to forgiveness. Both challenging and beautiful to read, it is a book that calls out wrongness and is full of openness and hope. The cries of curlew and lapwing, the slow growth of lichen, the tending of flowers, the clarity of running water; these are formidably evoked against the forces of discrimination and prejudice. Anita’s is a vital and resonant voice in the writing of place and nature in Britain, and here she powerfully and movingly reclaims the landscape of the North as hers to love and belong in.”

– Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland

 

“A brave and powerful book…I Belong Here is incredibly moving, uplifting, hopeful, clear-sighted and beautifully written.” 

   – Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train.

 

‘In gorgeous prose that rolls along like the uplands, Anita Sethi opens our eyes to the beauty of our countryside and the hurt and healing found therein. It is rare to find writing that evokes landscape so finely but also conveys our inner world with such power, emotion, vulnerability and truth.I Belong Here deserves its place alongside the Macfarlanes and Macdonalds as a classic of modern British nature writing‘

– Patrick Barkham, author of Wild Child

“Anita Sethi invites her reader to walk, not just at her side, but in her shoes, and to feel for themselves both the exhilaration and the chagrin of travelling the backbone of her home country as a woman of colour. By turns joyous and humbling, ‘I Belong Here’ is an urgent and necessary addition to the canon of contemporary writing about place in the island of Britain.”

– Katharine Norbury, editor of Women on Nature and author of The Fish Ladder

“Excellent...A powerful memoir about nature and belonging and racism and Britishness, as Anita Sethi undertakes a journey to reclaim her space in Britain following a terrifying hate crime on public transport”

– Nikesh Shukla, author of Brown Baby and editor of The Good Immigrant.

 

“Bold, lyrical and compelling, Sethi redefines the nature genre with this brave and defiant book. Part memoir, part philosophy, part analysis of current British culture and politics, I Belong Here is a reminder to us all to speak out when we witness racism of any kind. It is a rousing and beautiful ode to hope and wildness. I loved it.”
    – Emma Jane Unsworth, author of After the Storm, Adults and Animals

 

“A brilliantly accomplished mix of powerful memoir and revelatory nature writing, Sethi’s account of finding solace in the Northern countryside following a traumatic racial attack is a defiant act of reclamation and an astonishing piece of testimony.”

– Waterstones blog, Best Books to Look Forward to in 2021.

“A magnificent and redemptive achievement. Manchester-born Sethi achieves a powerful blend of memoir, travelogue and natural history as she reflects on nature, place and belonging; and at its beating heart, her book is a stirring love letter to this troubled country of ours. I find it so moving that such a beautifully written, hate-defying book has been born from such a horrific experience. I Belong Here is a shining example of how books, at their best, can be an act of resistance and a communal force for good.”

Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller Book of the Month/ Spring Highlights

“In a powerful blend of memoir, current affairs, travel and nature writing, “I Belong Here: A Journey Along the Backbone of Britain” charts Sethi’s solo journeys on foot through the Pennine Hills – through the open spaces she had been longing for – on a mission to reclaim the landscapes of her beloved north country from the racist who had told her to “get back on the banana boat…”. [An] imbued sense of “northern-ness” is one of the most striking qualities of “I Belong Here”. Sethi riffs beautifully on north country vernacular with place names, and the names of geological features providing the starting-point from which to discuss a broad range of issues. For example, the chapter called “Scars” in which she writes about climbing Pen-y-Ghent via the high cliff known as Horton Scar is also a reflection on loss and PTSD and on healing. Arriving in the North Yorkshire town of Settle prompts her to ask questions about what it means to have a home, to belong, and what it is to lack or be displaced from these things. In fact the entire book is structured in an allegorical way as an activist journey around the human body, from Mouth (“Speaking Up” & Bearing Witness”) to Feet (“Walking and Witnessing). And the fact that the Pennine Hills are popularly known as the backbone of Britain inspires a meditation on what it means to have backbone in a metaphorical sense – what we mean by strength, what people need in the way of social support structures. In fact, just like the limestone strata of the Pennine sedimentary landscapes she so evocatively describes, “I Belong Here” is a work of many layers, with Sethi excavating everything from the mental health crisis, systemic racism, isolation, and what it means to have a voice, to the protected characteristics of the 2010 Equality Act. At a time when so many have someone to grieve for, “I Belong Here” is a book about bearing loss too. The book also beautifully expresses her love of the natural world, and her joy at the renewed sense of embodiment that comes from putting one foot in front of the other. Robert Macfarlane describes it as a “brilliant, brave and important book”, and Sethi herself as a “vital and resonant voice”. And indeed she is.” 

Caroline Sanderson – From The Bookseller author profile of Anita Sethi

 

Further endorsements

“A brilliant writer” 

– NIKESH SHUKLA

On the Seasons nature writing anthology contribution:

 “Beautiful, really moving”

– MELISSA HARRISON

On forthcoming piece in Women on Nature: 

 “Very powerful”

 – KATHARINE NORBURY