Eco-grief, Radical Love, and Imaginative Futures with Selina Nwulu & Tessa McWatt

Join Neuroqueer Creative Studios for an important conversation about Eco-grief, Radical Love, and Imaginative Futures with poet & essayist Selina Nwulu and novelist & memoirist Tessa McWatt.

This joint author event will highlight the intersections between Tessa's most recent memoir, The Snag, and Selina's debut collection of essays, Black Climates: Notes on Race, Our Environment, and Visions for Equitable Futures. This coming together will be an incredibly important moment, especially in this political climate, dedicated to anti-colonialism in all its forms: racial justice, climate justice, disability justice, and how we can imagine new futures through radical love.

This event will feature an in-depth discussion between these authors, readings from both books, and an opportunity to join the conversation with an audience Q&A. Please note that it will not be recorded.

All ticketholders will receive a 15% discount code for Selina's 2026 course:

Writing the Future

Expect to read the poems of others and create new ones.

About The Snag:

In her much-anticipated second nonfiction book, The Snag, the acclaimed author of Shame On Me, Tessa McWatt, takes on personal and collective grief, and climate change. Every day, we hear about and experience griefs, large and small, in our families, friendships, communities, and worldwide. The grief of a loved one passing. The grief of a way of life ceasing to exist. The grief of global pandemic, war, climate collapse. From the newest seedling, to the oldest snag in the forest, there is meaning to be found in every stage of a tree’s life, all of which contribute to a thriving forest community; it is in this metaphor that Tessa begins to find answers to her questions about how to live (for each other), how to grieve (radically), and how to die (with love and connection). The Snag is an essential book about living and dancing and singing and praying, even in the face of unimaginable sadness, and in this way, growing together and supporting one another, like the trees in the forest. 

‘The Snag is a radical ecosystem of a book. Love and loss, death and renewal, seeds and snags; the intimately personal and the globally political are all delicately balanced here. Tessa McWatt holds us unflinchingly close in this singular and universal story of a mother’s decline, and demands that we face up to the grief of all that we stand to lose in our collective planetary home’s demise.’

• Marchelle Farrell, author of Uprooting

About Black Climates:

In her debut non-fiction book, Black Climates, poet Selina Nwulu reframes the climate crisis to encompass our disconnection from each other and the world around us. She argues that the root of climate change lies in historical colonial violence and ongoing exploitation, making it inherently racist. Nwulu, former Young People's Laureate for London, uses her poetic and skilful voice to directly address Black British readers who have been previously ignored in mainstream environmental conversations. She includes interviews with a wide range of creatives and campaigners to explore a variety of subjects, including air pollution, prison ecology, disability justice, migration, food, nature, community care, and radical imagination. This is an essential and empowering read for anyone who wants to fully understand the connections between Blackness and the climate crisis, providing the tools to envisage more equitable futures.

'This book is validating and monumental'

• Courttia Newland

‘Sensitive, powerful and necessary’

• Joycelyn Longdon

About Tessa McWatt:

Tessa McWatt is the author of seven novels and two books for young people. Her fiction has been nominated for the Governor General’s Award, the City of Toronto Book Awards, and the OCM Bocas Prize. Her first non-fiction book, Shame On Me: An Anatomy of Race and Belonging, won the 2020 Bocas Prize for Non-Fiction. Her new memoir, The Snag has been shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize 2025.

About Selina Nwulu: Selina Nwulu is an award-winning writer and researcher of Nigerian heritage. Former Young Poet Laureate for London, she’s been widely featured in a variety of journals, short films and anthologies, and her work has been exhibited worldwide. Her full-length poetry collection, A Little Resurrection, was an Irish Times book of the year. She is also a leader in the civic sector, working across social and climate justice as an independent consultant. Black Climates, is her debut essay collection.