Episode 120: Interview with Joanna Pocock, author of Surrender, exploring the changing landscape and cultures of the American West

The Sustainability Agenda

In this interview, Joanna Pocock talks about her recent book Surrender, a compelling, moving, and eye-opening exploration of the outsider eco-cultures blossoming in the new American West in an era of increasing climatic disruption, rising sea levels, animal extinctions, melting glaciers, and catastrophic wildfires. Joanna talks about the wide range of vibrant environmental movements that have taken root in response to the climate crisis – scavenger, rewilding, ecosexual--and explores the roots of these myriad cultures-in what is also a deeply moving and personal testimony to a rapidly changing world with an uncertain future.

Joanna Pocock is an Irish-Canadian writer currently living in London. Her work of creative non-fiction, Surrender, exploring the changing landscape of the American West, won the Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize in 2018 and the Arts Foundation environmental writing award in 2020. Her writing has notably appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation and on the Dark Mountain blog.