Writing the More-Than-Human

Today, a range of disciplines are discovering or perhaps acknowledging the many and marvelous capacities and qualities of beings other than humans, the complexity of their relationships, and the twin fallacies of human exceptionalism and individualism.

Yet even as what or who we know is undergoing radical transformations, writers find themselves working with the languages and grammars forged to convey and compose worlds we would better leave behind.

Within this old writing world, where freedom, agency, creativity, and complex feelings are the unique preserve of humans (and even then, only some humans), writers face the invidious choice of being accused of anthropomorphism or remaining mired in mechanomorphism.

Both do violence to the myriad and diverse ways of being that teem through the more than human world and to the complex entanglements within which all life, including human life, emerges.

Writers Alexis Wright, Danielle Celermajer and Hayley Singer will reflect on their own writing practices and how they are navigating the challenge of crafting texts that open out to the adventures of living differently and living together that writing might reveal.