Despair, determination

Facing the bird flu apocalypse together

Dear friends,

It’s been a stormy week - in many ways - and I seem to be cycling quickly between despair and determination and back again.

This week, in the region where I used to live, after a busy summer of feeding and raising chicks, the cranes should be leaving for their winter flight. Instead they’ve been devastated by avian influenza - bird flu - and more than 1000 have already been found dead or dying in their meadows. They are being loaded into trucks and destroyed with no good options except to get their bodies away from the foxes and eagles who might eat them. It’s already the worst outbreak among wild birds in Germany and it will only get worse from here.

We knew it was coming; no corner of the world is safe from this catastrophe rooted in factory farming and corporate greed. But the shock still comes. I’ve spent days avoiding it, I couldn’t face looking at the reports until I wrote these lines. I consider myself pretty well-resourced for facing difficult things - and this certainly isn’t the only trauma I’ve looked at closely this week - but still, I wanted to look away for as long as possible. I know I’m not the only one.

I’d like to think that this is why things like bird flu seem almost taboo - the scale is just too hard for us to take it in. Tens of millions of birds, hundreds of species. The seals and sealions dying on the beaches, the dolphins, otters and foxes.

But in my heart I know that isn’t the whole answer. Most people only ever hear of H5N1 and the other bird flu viruses in the context of occasional human infections and their ‘pandemic potential’ (for us, specifically. Which is all the media cares about). We might hear about the effects on domestic chickens and the price of eggs but it usually doesn’t go much further than that.

Something like bird flu has to become a spectacle for people to notice and care enough to take action - an outbreak among dolphins might do it. Baby cranes dying in the meadows might be enough. Or we might all forget again by next week.

So yes. Despair. I wrote a whole novel about bird flu for a reason.

And determination?

And hope?

Luckily I’ve had plenty of that as well. I happen to be in a stage of my life where I’m surrounded by engaged and committed people who love the world. I taught three days of herbalism and mutual aid at a university last week and my students inspired me with every new idea, unexpected connection and heartfelt action to centre care and disability justice in everything we do.

I received an email yesterday about the No Borders Herbal Collective and their important work creating “autonomous healthcare networks, to counter the violence of Fortress Europe, and to act in radical solidarity with all migrating people.” Support them here.

Life is never just the one thing. These cycles of determination and despair, and those of action and rest, are something we can learn to expect. Or maybe even embrace. In my experience, looking away can only last for so long anyway.

Keep reading for news on a couple of events I’ll be speaking at next month and a cute bookshop project.

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Upcoming events

In November I’ll be speaking at the European Literature Days near Vienna. Do I know anything about literature? I do not. But I’m up for an adventure.

Then a week later, I’ll be workshopping and speaking about queer resistance at Ecopolis in Brussels. I’m looking forward to it - and am very interested in finding some gluten-free waffles.

Bookshop resource share

Since 2017, selling books for me has been a consistently manual affair. I have schlepped bags of books over several continents, offering hundreds of readings in community spaces, bookshops and squats, distributing books, one by one by one.

This November I want to make a concerted effort to contact bookshops to let them know about my novels and colouring books. If you’re up for it, let’s do it together! Here’s a guide that explains the different ways that stores can order books. If you contact a bookshop or distro directly to let them know about my work that’s even better. Thank you!

Please drop the names of your favourite (radical, queer, environmental or just cute) bookshops and distros in the comments on this newsletter. If I can collect enough, I’ll make it a resource on my website for other writers to make use of.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to say hi and share my writing if you want to. It really really helps.

love,
Kes