Human/Nature: On life in a wild world

Published in 2025
213 pages

epub



Jane Rawson grew up in Canberra and travelled via San Francisco and Melbourne to Tasmania, where she works as a writer for a conservation organisation. Her first novel, A Wrong turn at the Office of Unmade Lists, won the Small Press Network’s Most Underrated Book Award and her second novel, From the Wreck, won the Aurealis Award and was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. She is also the author of a non-fiction guide to surviving and living with climate change called The Handbook and a novella, Formaldehyde, which won the 2015 Seizure Viva La Novella Prize. You can read her essays in Living with the Anthropocene; Fire, Flood, Plague; and Reading like an Australian Writer.

What is this book about?
Several years ago, Jane Rawson packed up her beloved inner-city home and moved to the bush. Scared about what climate change would do to the big city, and keen to meet more animals, she found a new home in a cottage in the Huon Valley. But in a place where nature never really leaves you alone, she had to confront her uncomfortable relationship with the outdoors.

A lyrical work of creative nonfiction, Human/Nature is an exploration of how and why we think about the natural world the way we do. If you’ve ever asked yourself whether humans are ruining nature, whether there’s a better way for us to belong, or whether it’s possible to love both the environment and your cat, you’re not alone. This exquisite, contemplative book is for anyone who has ever wondered where they fit in the natural world.