About

Meet Kay Michael, co-founder and co-editor of Letters to the Earth. Kay shares her ideas for a creative response to the environmental emergency. Be inspired to write your own letter to the Earth.

Letters to the Earth: Writing to a Planet in Crisis  brings together over 100 letters – from children, parents, scientists, nurses, artists and politicians worldwide – in response to the combined crises of the climate and ecological emergency, and the coronavirus pandemic.

With an introduction by Emma Thompson, there are letters responding to Covid-19 from Booker Prize-winning author Ben Okri and Skin’s star Freya Mavor, plus contributions from Yoko Ono, actor Mark Rylance, poet Kae Tempest, author Laline Paull, illustrator of The Lost Words Jackie Morris and environmental writer Jay Griffiths.

The letters are gathered into key themes: Love, Loss, Emergence, Hope and Action. Reflecting on the last year, Ben Okri writes that we are at the ‘beginning of an age of catastrophes’, and that we must listen to the earth’s ‘silent wisdom’ in order to live again. While Freya Mavor in her letter invites us to ‘Be brave. Be still. Be kind.’

“This book takes on the conversation we need to have in 2021,” said Kay Michael, co-editor of the book. “From a callout that resulted in over a 1000 letters flooding our inbox, it asks: How do we find the words to process what’s happening to the planet?

“From the letters we’ve seen it’s clear that people care and are ready to act. The response to the pandemic shows us that change is possible.”

Emma Thompson, writing in the forward for the Letters to the Earth anthology, commented: “The generation below mine is different. I feel it and I read it in these letters. Read this book and pass it on. Plugging in that energy will recharge even the most tired of batteries. Hand on your passion for the planet to the next person and never, ever give in.”