Biography
Chloe Dalton is a writer, political adviser and foreign policy specialist. She spent over a decade working in the UK Parliament and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and has advised, and written for and with, numerous prominent figures. She divides her time between London and her home in the English countryside.
Her debut book, Raising Hare, was an instant Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller. It was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize and the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction, and was selected as a Waterstones Book of the Year and as the Hay Festival Book of the Year. It was a Critics Best Books pick for The Times, Financial Times, Guardian, Spectator and iNews and was a Waterstones Non-Fiction Book of the Month.
P.S. Also an Australian rugby player by same name.
Biography—work as a policy writer
During her time in the UK government, her responsibilities involved:
Drafting speeches for prominent political figures, including former Foreign Secretary William Hague.
Advising on international political and humanitarian issues that required her to be on call at all hours.
Writing concise and clear policy documents, a skill she learned early in her career as a parliamentary researcher.
Focusing on complex global issues, such as war and human rights, which often required her to travel internationally.
Since leaving her full-time government role, she continues to work as a consultant on international issues and is also a nature writer.
Video—on Instagram
Difference between rabbit and hare (AI)
Hares and rabbits are different species within the same family, with key differences including size, physical build, and the development of their young. Hares are generally larger, have longer legs and ears, and their babies (leverets) are born fully furred with eyes open, while rabbits are smaller, stockier, and their young (kits) are born blind, hairless, and helpless. Additionally, hares live in open areas and rely on speed, while rabbits live in burrows and are more social.
Memoirs: key characteristics
Memoirs are factual accounts based on the author's personal memories, therefore non-fiction.
Characteristics:
First-person perspective: The story is told from the author's own point of view.
Thematic focus: Instead of covering an entire life, a memoir revolves around a specific time period, event, or theme.
Emotional truth: The narrative strives for emotional truth, conveying the author's feelings, thoughts, and lessons learned from the experiences.
Narrative techniques: Memoirs employ storytelling techniques common in novels, such as plot, setting, and scene, to make the experiences more relatable and engaging for the reader.
Memoirs: key characteristics
Memoirs are also:
Creative non-fiction, a true story, but authors can use creative writing techniques to engage the reader and explore the experience. Memoirs are factual accounts based on the author's personal memories.
Subjective and emotional: the writing is deeply personal, and focuses on the author's feelings, thoughts, and interpretations of events, aiming for emotional resonance with the reader.
Introspective and reflective: authors often explore the meaning and significance of their experiences, allowing for introspection and reflection on what happened.
Narrative arc: like fiction, a memoir generally follows a narrative structure, often with a beginning, middle, and end, to tell a coherent and engaging story.
Memoirs: key characteristics
Nature Memoirs
Nature memoirs are a sub-genre of memoirs in which the author reflects on their personal experiences as they relate to nature or the environment. They exist at the intersection of autobiography and nature writing and contain elements of each genre.
Nature memoirs often focus on one specific place, time period, or event and weave narration about the writer’s life with observations about the natural world. Writers typically choose one set of themes to explore and use their memoir as a way to contemplate their own experiences as well as introduce readers to an environmental issue.
Common themes are the exploration of climate change, human encroachment on wild habitats, deforestation and urbanization, or an in-depth look at a particular animal species.
Memoirs: key characteristics
Nature Memoirs
The sub-genre is often dated to Thoreau’s Walden (1854), an account of the two years the author spent living in a small cabin on Walden Pond. Thoreau simplified his life, immersed himself in nature, and even grew his own food in an attempt to regain some measure of the peace and autonomy he felt he’d lost by growing up in a capitalist society.
Thoreau muses on the nature of life during the industrial revolution, contemplates how societal forces shaped his identity as an individual, and shares his observations about the beauty of the woods surrounding Walden Pond.
Memoirs: key characteristics
Nature Memoirs
A Sand County Almanac (1949) by Aldo Leopold is another of the sub-genre’s classic works. In it, the author describes the events of one year spent on his farm, interweaving his own experiences with key observations about rural Wisconsin, where his farm is located.
Structured as a series of essays, the work culminates with Leopold’s “Land Ethic.” In it, he advocates for a shift in how humanity understands its relationship with the land. Leopold argues that the land is not merely a resource to be exploited but rather part of the community to which humans, along with plants and animals, belong.
He urges his readers to see the planet as one large, interconnected system in which each living thing plays an equal and important role. He also explains the consequences that human actions can and have had on the natural world and calls for a more concerted, organized effort to protect nature. He is often cited as one of the first conservationists, and The Sand County Almanac is still widely read and taught.
Memoirs: key characteristics
Nature Memoirs
Annie Dillard is another early pioneer of nature memoirs. Her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974) focuses on the seasonal changes she observes at Tinker Creek near her home in Virginia during the course of one year. She describes the many walks she takes to Tinker Creek, introducing readers to the flora and fauna native to the area, but also asks big-picture questions about God, philosophy, and the differences between true wilderness, the ex-urban landscape in which she lives, and the city.
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in 1975 and launched a long career. Many of her books, including Teaching a Stone to Talk (1982) and Holy the Firm (1977) also interweave personal narrative, philosophy, and an interrogation of humanity’s place within the natural world, and even her older works still enjoy a wide readership.
Memoirs: key characteristics
Nature Memoirs
Wild: Lost and Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (2012) by Cheryl Strayed is a popular contemporary nature memoir. In it, the author narrates her through-hike of the Pacific Crest Trail, weaving a description of the hardships and setbacks she faces along the way with an honest, if at times difficult look, into her childhood and personal life. Like Thoreau, Cheryl retreats to the wilderness in order to better reflect on her own life and her place within family, community, and society.
The connection between nature, solitude, and contemplation is a key facet of many nature memoirs as well as nature writing as a whole, and Strayed’s book uses that framework to better examine the impact of grief, loss, and addiction.
Memoirs: key characteristics
Nature Memoirs
H is For Hawk (2014), by Helen MacDonald, is another recent example of a bestselling nature memoir. It contains an account of the author’s attempts to train a goshawk in the wake of her father’s death. Like Raising Hare, it is a meditation on the healing power of nature that combines personal narrative with an in-depth look at one particular species.
She shares with Chloe Dalton an interest in research and a dedication to lifelong learning, and she interweaves her own descriptions of the training process with a meditation on the memoirs of T. H. White, a man who struggled with falconry during the 1930s.
In the way that Dalton attempts to learn more about hares and improve her caretaking methods, MacDonald tries to learn as much as she can from both White’s triumphs and failures.
Memoirs: key characteristics
Nature Memoirs
Lab Girl (2016) by Hope Jahren is another best-selling contemporary example of a nature memoir. It chronicles the author’s life as a geo-biologist. The text is divided into three sections, each detailing a particular period in Jahren’s life. She begins with an account of her childhood in rural Minnesota, moves on to the early days of her teaching career, and ends with a section on her personal life and the late stage of her career.
Throughout the book, Jahren explores various species of plant life, explaining the ways that humans, animals, and insects impact plant health and habitat. Like other nature memoirs, the author uses nature as a way to meditate on her own life and uses her writing as a way to introduce readers to a set of related environmental issues.
Sci-fi defined (AI)
Science fiction is a genre of speculative fiction that explores imaginative concepts based on scientific and technological advancements, such as space exploration, time travel, advanced technology, and extraterrestrial life.
It is a broad genre with subgenres like "hard SF," which emphasizes scientific accuracy, and "soft SF," which focuses more on social sciences, human behavior, and emotional responses to technology.
The genre often uses future or alternative settings to comment on the present through cautionary tales or by posing "what if" scenarios.
Key characteristics
Speculative themes: Based on scientific principles, it explores potential future scenarios, technologies, and consequences that go beyond current reality.
Common elements: Frequently includes elements like space travel, robots, artificial intelligence, aliens, time travel, parallel universes, and genetic engineering.
Distinction from fantasy: While fantasy relies on magic, science fiction is rooted in scientific or pseudo-scientific concepts, even if the science is fictionalized.
Sci-fi defined (AI)
Subgenres
Hard Science Fiction: Focuses on scientific accuracy and detail, with technology and scientific principles playing a crucial role in the plot.
Soft Science Fiction: Explores the impact of science and technology on human society and psychology, often focusing on social sciences, politics, and human relationships.
Mundane Science Fiction: A subgenre of hard SF that keeps the story grounded on Earth or the solar system and uses only current or near-future technology.
Functions of the genre
Exploration: Allows authors to explore "what if" questions about scientific breakthroughs and their potential outcomes.
Cautionary tales: Can serve as a warning about the potential negative consequences of technological advancement.
Social commentary: Provides a framework for commenting on current social, political, and ethical issues by placing them in a different time or setting.
Questions for discussion
In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Carrol details the exploits of the “Mad” March Hare, an anthropomorphized hare characterized by his seemingly irrational behavior. It leaps, it twirls, it "boxes." Do these behaviors indicate that hares are "mad." If not, what do they indicate?
Questions for discussion
Dalton never names the hare, referring to it always as "the hare," or "the leveret" when it's young. Why? What does this tell us about her relationship with the hare?
Questions for discussion
Is there a "villain" in this story? If so, what is it?
Questions for discussion
How does this book fit into the "theme" for this course about adopting a different perspective?
Questions for discussion
A month from now, a year from now, what will you remember from this book? What is the take-away?
Questions for discussion
The book ends with the following paragraph:
I tell myself not to count the years ahead in which she might never again come, but rather cherish the days she has given me of her own free will, when she lowered her species’ instinctive guard against humans, and shared the beauty and mystery of her presence in silent and graceful companionship. I will remember her leaving, but will know that before she did, she always, first, looked back.
What does this conclusion say to you?
Questions for discussion
Dalton does quite a bit of research as she learns to care for the leveret. What does her research tell her?
Interview (Women's Prize)
Did you have any revelation moments when writing your book? When the narrative and your objectives all fell into place?
I remember an intense summer storm, a day when there was no going outside. I was working on the book, listening to the rain cascading off the roof. I looked up to see that I was surrounded by sleeping hares: the mother hare, stretched out in the sitting room, one of her wild leverets lounging on the sofa, and the other leveret outside, crouched on the windowsill flanking my desk. In that moment we were all just animals sheltering from the rain, lulled into sleepiness by the downpour, coexisting. My feelings in that instant and the sentiment I wanted to capture on the page were one and the same.
Interview (Women's Prize)
What is the one thing you’d like a reader to take away from reading your book? Is there one fact from the book that you think will stick with readers?
Female hares are almost unique in their ability to carry two separate pregnancies at the same time. They can fall pregnant while already carrying a litter! It is one of the many uncanny things about them that has led to them being associated with witches and witchcraft.
But in actual fact, it is a sign of just how hard a hare’s life is. They have evolved this ability to try to offset the number of their young that die or are killed each year.
There is a striking contrast between the reputation of hares as mad, crazy creatures and their actual dignity, strength and grace, observed at close quarters.
Living alongside the hare made me think that if I can learn so much from the life and nature of a single brown hare, how much more do we still have to learn from the wild?
Interview (Women's Prize)
What is the best piece of writing advice you have ever received?
My first real job was as a researcher to a Member of Parliament. In my first week, my father came across me sitting at home, early in the morning, worrying over the text of something I’d drafted. When I asked for help, he pulled up a chair next to me, took my pencil, and after a few moments, drew a steady line through every superfluous word on the page.
He told me that in Parliament I would write for people who didn’t have much time to read, and that I should learn to convey my point as briefly as possible. I’ve come across various iterations of that advice in the years since.
"Know how complicated it is and then state it simply," Hemingway wrote. But my father taught this to me first, and I’ve never forgotten it.
Interview (Women's Prize)
Is there a non-fiction book you recommend all the time? If so, what is it and why do you recommend it?
The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich. It tells the stories of some of the nearly one million Soviet women who voluntarily served on the Eastern Front – the most brutal flank – in the Second World War. They fought in hand-to-hand combat, and dragged wounded men from the turrets of burning tanks.
But, after the war, they were intentionally forgotten. It’s war told from the female point of view. I admire the way Alexievich removes herself from the story to allow the women’s voices to speak for themselves, unfiltered.
It might seem a strange book for me to single out, given that I’ve written a book about nature, but it reflects the work I did for many years – really up until the point that I met the hare – which was focused on what war does to women.
Interview (Women's Prize)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie—one of the women she's reading—Ted talk—the danger of a single story
I've always felt that it is impossible to engage properly with a place or a person without engaging with all of the stories of that place and that person. The consequence of the single story is this: It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar.
Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.
I would like to end with this thought: That when we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.
Interview (Women's Prize)
Did you have any revelation moments when writing your book? When the narrative and your objectives all fell into place?
I remember an intense summer storm, a day when there was no going outside. I was working on the book, listening to the rain cascading off the roof. I looked up to see that I was surrounded by sleeping hares: the mother hare, stretched out in the sitting room, one of her wild leverets lounging on the sofa, and the other leveret outside, crouched on the windowsill flanking my desk. In that moment we were all just animals sheltering from the rain, lulled into sleepiness by the downpour, coexisting. My feelings in that instant and the sentiment I wanted to capture on the page were one and the same.
Interview (Book Page)
What do you love most about your memoir?
I wrote the book with the hare stretched out on her side in my office, or licking her paws beside me. As I settled at my desk in the morning to write, she would arrive back from her nocturnal wanderings, shake the dew from her fur and settle down to rest. I never knew what the next day would bring, and it filled me with a sense of wonder. If I’d been writing about an experience that was already in the past, there might have been a temptation to burnish it with my own interpretation and the benefit of hindsight. Instead, my task was to observe closely, to listen and to try faithfully to describe what I witnessed.
Interview (Book Page)
What kind of reader do you think will most appreciate or enjoy your book?
I’m not a scientist or conservationist; I’m a city dweller who happened to have an extraordinary experience with a wild animal. I hope that the book might appeal to people who wouldn’t normally read nature writing. Perhaps readers who, like me, had a strong connection to animals in their childhood but lost sight of that because of work stress and responsibility. Or anyone who is going through a difficult period in their life and feels uncertain about the future. The message of the book is that sometimes the most beautiful experiences in life are just around the corner, or—in this case—just at the end of the garden. The things that we least expect can end up bringing us the greatest joy.
Interview (Book Page)
At what point did you know this story was a book?
When the hare was 4 months old, she learned to leap the wall around the garden. She melted invisibly into the landscape of fields and woods, and I thought she was gone forever. But instead she returned, of her own accord, and chose to live a dual life between the wild and my home. The fact that she felt so safe in my house that she wished to return was deeply moving. At that point, I knew I was witnessing something very unusual, and that I wanted to document the story for myself and for others.
Interview (Book Page)
Was there anything that surprised you as you wrote?
I was surprised by how much action and interest there is in the life of a hare. And I could never have imagined that I could experience such curiosity, interest, joy and satisfaction from living alongside a family of wild animals. Trying to find the words to describe the color and pattern of her fur, watching her conceal herself from predators in the garden, waiting for her young to emerge at night so she could feed them, all these moments captivated me. I was utterly absorbed, and felt more at peace than at any other point in my life.
Interview (Book Page)
What is the most interesting thing you had to research in order to write this book?
Hares have the very rare ability to carry two separate pregnancies at the same time—a phenomenon known as superfetation. I had the privilege of watching this happen in real life. I then read every study I could find, to understand this extraordinary, and rather controversial, aspect of a hare’s biology. It was also very enjoyable simply trying to pin down the exact differences between rabbits and hares. Before I met the hare, I couldn’t have told you what those differences were, but there are a great many, since they are in fact different species.
Can you describe your book as an item on a menu?
I’d like to think that it would be something unpretentious, nourishing, warm and comforting. Something homemade, and simple. Freshly made bread, perhaps, with a touch of salt.
Review—New York Times
Dalton did not name, tame or cage the animal, turning her house into a free-range hare bed-and-breakfast. Its behavior began to change her own: “I was moved by the leveret’s dignity, the sense of well-being and calm it spread, and the simplicity of its life.”
Adapting her own work-driven existence to the daily rhythms and environmental awareness introduced by her furry new housemate, she had an epiphany: “I’d been waiting for life to go back to normal, but if I could derive this much pleasure from something so simple, what else might be waiting to be discovered?” The irony of learning to slow down from an animal known for its speed is not lost here.
Other books about man and animals
H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald’s moving story about coping with grief through training a goshawk named Mabel, sold more than 500,000 copies in the United States
Alfie and Me, the ecologist Carl Safina’s memoir about finding a sickly baby screech owl and raising it,
George, Frieda Hughes’s book about living with a mischievous magpie.
Catherine Raven, Fox and I: An Uncommon Friendship.
When Catherine Raven finished her PhD in biology, she built herself a tiny cottage on an isolated plot of land in Montana. She was as emotionally isolated as she was physically, but she viewed the house as a way station, a temporary rest stop where she could gather her nerves and fill out applications for what she hoped would be a real job that would help her fit into society.
Then one day she realized that a mangy-looking fox was showing up on her property every afternoon at 4:15 p.m. She had never had a regular visitor before. She brought out her camping chair, sat as close to him as she dared, and began reading to him from The Little Prince. Her scientific training had taught her not to anthropomorphize animals, yet as she grew to know him, his personality revealed itself and they became friends.
Next week:
Background on Wolfe Island
The week following
Discussion of Wolfe Island