Professor Maggie Gee - Presentation 23rd May 2018 - Empathy Group

This item contains audio of the presentation by Professor Maggie Gee for the Empathy Group meeting held 23rd May 2018.

Maggie Gee has chaired the Empathy Group since it began in early 2015. She has written 14 books which include several novels about the relations between human beings and the non-human living world, like Grace, The Ice People, and Where are the Snows and The Flood (2004). Some have been direct attempts to engage the reader on specific, and current, real-life ecological-political issues, others are more playful or mythical, and she is always pulled between the two approaches.

Maggie’s paper, called ‘Let it be light’, suggested that empathy with the reader and with even the most disreputable parts of the writer’s own self, as well as empathy with nature, may be a path towards lightness when trying to write about weighty themes, and that lightness may be the best way to woo the reader to dance to the writer’s tune.

Meeting minutes can also be found on our repository here: https://data.bathspa.ac.uk/articles/Empathy_Group_-_Meeting_13_Notes_23_May_2018/9632249