Spring Hope Walk Write Workshop with Anita Sethi at The Portico

Spring Hope: A Walk Write-Shop with Anita Sethi at The Portico Library, Chinatown, 26 March 2023, from £10 - Book now

The Portico Library is running a series of Walk Write Workshops with its Rambler in Residence Anita Sethi from late March to June; the first one, Spring Hope, celebrating the increase in daylight hours on Sunday 26 March.

The walks will have an emphasis on using nature to walk through worries and inspire writing around the theme of the walk, while also offering ideas for related books to read, perhaps in one of the comfy armchairs in the 19th-century library gem. With the newly renovated home of ‘polite literature’ The Portico as their start point, the walks will take place in different parts of (mainly) central Manchester.

As well as the Portico’s Rambler in Residence, Anita Sethi has been Writer in Residence at Manchester Museum, where her original commission – a poem called ‘We All Have Wings Within Us’ – is displayed in the foyer at the newly reopened museum. She explains that the piece is inspired by ‘this amazing incense burner filled with all manner of wonderful wings, and also speaks to the power of the imagination to transport us all to worlds beyond’.

As well as the Portico’s Rambler in Residence, Anita Sethi has been Writer in Residence at Manchester Museum, where her original commission – a poem called ‘We All Have Wings Within Us’ – is displayed in the foyer.

Manchester born, Anita Sethi is an award-winning broadcaster and journalist, writing columns, features and reviews for national and international newspapers and magazines including the Guardian and Observer. She is the author of the acclaimed book 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 UK Nature Writing and the Great Outdoors Award. She is also recipient of a Royal Society of Literature, Literature Matters Award and is a Judge of the Women’s Prize 2022.

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