Paul Kingsnorth

Paul Kingsnorth

Paul Kingsnorth (born 1972 in Worcester) is an English writer who lives in Cumbria, England. He is a former deputy-editor of The Ecologist and a co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project. His journalism has been widely published and in 2011 he released a book of poetry, Kidland and other poems.

Biography

Kingsnorth was educated at the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe, and St Anne's College, Oxford, where he studied modern history. During this period he became involved in the British road protest movement at sites including Twyford Down, Solsbury Hill and the M11 link road protest in east London. Much of his writing has since been focused on issues of place, nature and environmental concern.

In 1995, after leaving university, he worked briefly on the comment desk of the Independent, before leaving to join the environmental campaign group EarthAction. He has subsequently worked as commissioning editor for openDemocracy, as a publications editor for Greenpeace and, between 1999 and 2001, as deputy editor of The Ecologist. He was named one of Britain's 'top ten troublemakers' by the New Statesman magazine in 2001.

In 2004, he was one of the founders of the Free West Papua Campaign, which campaigns for the secession of the provinces of Papua and West Papua from Indonesia, where Kingsnorth was made an honorary member of the Lani tribe in 2001.

In recent years, he has written for or contributed to the Guardian, Independent, Daily Telegraph, Daily Express, Le Monde, New Statesman, Ecologist, New Internationalist, Big Issue, Adbusters, BBC Wildlife, openDemocracy, BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 2, BBC Four, ITV and Resonance FM.

He is the author of Your Countryside, Your Choice, a report on the future of the countryside, published in 2005 by the Campaign to Protect Rural England. His first book, One No, Many Yeses (Simon and Schuster, 2003), an investigative journey through the 'anti-globalisation' movement, was published in six languages in thirteen countries. His second book, Real England, was published by Portobello Books in 2008.

His first collection of poetry, Kidland and other poems, was published by Salmon in 2011. His poetry has appeared in UK poetry magazines including Envoi, Iota, Reach, The Lighthouse, Staple, Agenda and nthposition. He won the Poetry Life National Competition in 1998, and was named BBC Wildlife Poet of the Year in the same year. In 2012, he won the Wenlock Prize.

In 2009, with writer and social activist Dougald Hine, Kingsnorth co-founded the Dark Mountain Project, 'a network of writers, artists and thinkers who have stopped believing the stories our civilisation tells itself.' Since 2009 it has run a series of summer festivals and smaller events, produced annual anthologies of 'uncivilised' writing and art and built up a network of writers and artists across the globe who aim to 'offer up a challenge to the foundations of our civilisation.' He is now the Project's Director.

His first novel, The Wake, was published by Unbound in 2013. The Wake was on the longlist for the 2014 Man Booker Prize..

Books

• One No, Many Yeses: a journey to the heart of the global resistance movement (2003, Free Press) ISBN 0-7432-2027-7
• Real England: the battle against the bland (2008, Portobello) ISBN 1-84627-042-1
• Uncivilisation: the Dark Mountain manifesto (co-author, 2009, Dark Mountain Project)
• Kidland, and other poems (2011, Salmon) ISBN 1-907056-67-X
• The Wake (2013, Unbound, forthcoming)

As editor:

• Dark Mountain: issue 1, (2010, Dark Mountain Project) ISBN 0-9564960-0-8
• Dark Mountain: issue 2, (2011, Dark Mountain Project) ISBN 0-9564960-1-6
• Dark Mountain: issue 3, (2012, Dark Mountain Project) ISBN 0-9564960-2-4

External links

• Paul Kingsnorth's website
• The Dark Mountain Project
• Interview with Paul Kingsnorth, from 3AM magazine
• New Statesman review of 'Uncivilisation: the Dark Mountain Manifesto'
• New York Times Magazine profile, "It’s the End of the World as We Know It... and He Feels Fine"