Sarah Thomas, with Lancaster Sewing Café: The Raven’s Nest

Artfully weaving nature writing, memoir and travel, this is the story of learning to belong in the elemental landscape of Iceland’s bewitching West fjords.

In partnership with Lancaster Sewing Café, we offer a contemplative event in the style of an Icelandic ‘mending’ session, at which we will hear about Lancaster Sewing Café’s work and then Sarah will talk about and read from her wonderful book, The Raven’s Nest. You are invited to bring any mending projects you may have on the go to do during Sarah’s reading, if you wish; some materials will be provided.

Visiting Iceland as an anthropologist and film-maker in 2008, Sarah Thomas was spellbound by its otherworldly landscape. An immediate love for this country and for Bjarni, a man she met there, turned a week-long stay into a transformative half-decade, one which radically altered Sarah’s understanding of herself and of the living world.

‘Sarah Thomas’s lyrical, thoughtful prose takes us on a journey, both physical and emotional, to the far north’ – Cal Flynn, author of Islands of Abandonment

‘A deeply thoughtful, vivid, enquiring and genre-traversing book… Sarah’s writing draws readers north-wards and inwards upon a fascinating journey’ – Robert Macfarlane.

Sarah Thomas is a writer and filmmaker with a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies. Her films have been screened internationally. She is a contributor to the Dark Mountain journal. Her writing has also appeared in the Guardian and the anthology Women on Nature (ed. Katherine Norbury). Longlisted for the inaugural Nan Shepherd Award and shortlisted for the 2021 Fitzcarraldo Essay Prize.

Sewing Café Lancaster Is a grassroots project that advocates for an ethical textile industry and regenerative textile practices. Get in touch at [email protected]