Collaborative Essay: Multispecies Grief in the Wake of Megafires

Based on a shared conversation at the Nature Feelz Symposium organized by Blanche Verlie and James Dunk at the University of Sydney on unceded Gadigal land in December 2022, we - Nathaniel Otjen, Shannon Lambert, Hannah Della Bosca, Blanche Verlie and myself - wrote a piece on how wildfires are a more-than-human experience and how we might grieve its losses in multispecies ways. In the aftermath of Australia's devastating 'Black Summer', we muse of smoky atmospheres, grieving with kangaroos, re-telling stories of extinction and lanscape collapse, responsibility and collective memory.

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Multispecies Grief in the Wake of Megafires

A global coalition of authors articulate the importance of acknowledging multispecies grief within the environmental violence of megafires.

Our essay is the s the sixth piece in the series Violent Environments, which explores how violence is enacted through, for, and on environmental spaces, including land, water, and air, edited by Kristen Billings, Rebecca Laurent, and Rudy Molinek.

EdgeEffects is a digital magazine produced by graduate students of the Center for Culture, History, and Environment (CHE) at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Feature Image: Jo-Anne McArthur/WeAnimals Media