The Borough Press to publish 'powerful' exploration of grief and nature

The Borough Press will publish The Ghost Lake by Wendy Pratt after UK and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) were acquired by Ann Bissell, deputy publishing director, from Caro Clarke at Portobello Literary.

According to the publisher, the titles weave together nature writing with an exploration of grief, belonging and the lives of rural working class people. The "ghost lake" in question is paleo-lake Flixton, an extinct lake in North Yorkshire. Inhabitation of the site goes back thousands of years, but today all that is left of the lake is a watermark.

The synopsis reads: “Pratt brings the reader on a pilgrimage around this extinct lake, to specific locations that have acted as journey markers in her own life, while reflecting on the process of finding belonging in nature as a woman who exists in a series of liminal spaces – as a working-class writer, as an infertile woman in a fertile world, as a bereaved mother in a society focused on children. It’s an examination of the power that landscape holds over people throughout their lives and it’s also a story about the legacies of the ancient lake people, and about the remnants that modern-day lake people will leave behind for future generations to uncover.”

Bissell said the book provides a “vivid description of nature and place” while Clarke described Pratt’s writing as “stunning”.

Pratt commented: “So often writing about landscape and nature is an act of observation rather than a lived experience. When writing The Ghost Lake, I wanted to write from the bottom of the lake itself, attached to it, formed by it, exploring the intimacies of landscape from a rural working-class perspective, the relationship with landscape and belonging, how we remember ourselves in its archive, how we mark the burial places of the people we loved.”

Pratt is a poet, author, editor and workshop facilitator living and working on the North Yorkshire coast, where she grew up. She is the author of five collections of poetry. Her latest collection When I Think of My Body as a Horse (Smith|Doorstop Books) won the Poetry Business Book and Pamphlet award in 2021. She is the founder and editor in chief of Spelt Magazine, and runs courses and workshops at York Centre for Lifelong Learning.

Longlisted for the Nan Shepherd Prize, The Ghost Lake will publish in hardback, e-book and audio in spring 2024.