Nearly two years ago, I drove for three hours to turn up on a stranger’s doorstep. She was expecting me, and showed me around her garden. Then she asked me what I wanted, and I couldn’t really explain. I fumbled, and then told her I wanted to know what had drawn her to the garden. Her answer was surprising, and beautiful, and convinced me to carry on. For the next year, in-between lockdowns and kept apart by social distancing, I interviewed 45 women in green and growing spaces of their choosing. I thought I’d learn about the earth, and I did. But I learned far more about womanhood, and what it was to be a woman. I learned that the outdoors can hold intimacies better than any room, and that the generosity of strangers can be deeply humbling.

This is how I started Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival - my next book, out in March (2.3.23 - a date that really pleases me). I’m so pleased to reveal the beautiful cover below, and to share the pre-order link - right here.

If you’re still with me, I’d love to explain briefly as to why pre-ordering a book, rather than buying it upon release, makes such a difference. Books are products of numbers as much as they are of words: those involved in the crucial work of marketing, printing, stocking and selling a book use the number of pre-ordered copies as an indication of the book’s future success. It’s these numbers that can inform how many copies a bookshop buys in, or whether they decide to put a copy in their window. Pre-order numbers usher a book up bestselling charts on Amazon as much as they do The Sunday Times, enabling others to encounter it. They’re frustratingly important, which means that pre-ordering a book you’re interested in, or intend to buy later, is often the best way to support an author you like. If you’re a library user, great - you can ask your library to pre-order a copy, and make sure you’re first on the list once it’s released. You can do this from Waterstones, or Amazon, or your local indie.

That’s the hard sell over. I’ll be revealing more about Why Women Grow in coming months, right here on savour. Paid members will have access to extracts and events and other goodies down the line. If that’s something you’d like to try out, you can upgrade your membership below.

Until then, thank you for your excitement and support so far! It’s a lonely and weird thing, writing a book and nudging it into reality. You’ve made it a lot nicer.