EMMA MITCHELL
Agent: Juliet Pickering
Assistant: Finlay Charlesworth
Biography: Emma Mitchell is a popular naturalist, illustrator and designer-maker. She trained as a scientist and has a particular interest in how simple acitivities can alter brain biochemistry in order to improve mental health. She has written segments for BBC Springwatch & Autumnwatch, featured on the BBC’s Countryfile and Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. Emma is one of the Guardian’s Country Diarists and has written for a number of publications, including Country Living, the ipaper, and Mollie Makes. Her first book, MAKING WINTER: A Creative Guide to Surviving the Winter Months, was published to outstanding praise in 2017, and her illustrated diary THE WILD REMEDY: How Nature Mends Us, was published in 2019 and became a Sunday Times bestseller.
Emma lives on the edge of the Fens in Eastern England with her husband, two daughters and Annie their lurcher. She often records her daily nature finds with photographs and illustrations on her Twitter (@silverpebble) & Instagram (@silverpebble2).
THE WILD REMEDY JOURNAL
Nature, 128 pages, Michael O’Mara, December 2023
In THE WILD REMEDY, Emma Mitchell’s deeply personal account of her interactions with nature and its healing properties, she recorded, month by month, a year of her nature finds and wildlife discoveries and the science behind how nature affects our neurochemistry. Now, in this stunning journal, she invites her many followers to accompany her on that road, to experience nature for themselves, record their own interactions and find healing in the natural world.
Full of Emma’s exquisite artworks and photographs, this journal contains many of her own observations and reflections, along with prompts and ideas that will help to unlock the readers’ experience of nature. It shows how reconnecting with the natural world around us can be a powerful tool – as medicinal as any talking therapy or pharmaceutical.
This unique journal includes activities, drawing prompts, contemplative quotes and lots of space for you to write about your own thoughts, feelings and experiences.
THE WILD REMEDY: How Nature Mends Us
Nature, 192 pages, Michael O’Mara, January 2019
Emma Mitchell has suffered with depression - or as she calls it, 'the grey slug' - for twenty-five years. In 2003, she moved from the city to the edge of the Cambridgeshire Fens and began to take walks in the countryside around her new home, photographing, collecting and drawing as she went. Each walk lifted her mood, proving to be as medicinal as any talking therapy or pharmaceutical.
In Emma's hand-illustrated diary, she takes us with her as she follows the paths and trails around her cottage and further afield, sharing her nature finds and tracking the lives of local flora and fauna over the course of a year. Reflecting on how these encounters impact her mood, Emma's moving and candid account of her own struggles is a powerful testament to how reconnecting with nature may offer some answers to today's mental health epidemic. While charting her own seasonal highs and lows, she also explains the science behind such changes, calling on new research into such areas as forest bathing and the ways in which our bodies and minds respond to plants and wildlife when we venture outdoors.
Written with Emma's characteristic wit and frankness, and filled with her beautiful drawings, paintings and photography, this is a truly unique book for anyone who has ever felt drawn to nature and wondered about its influence over us.
MAKING WINTER
Craft, 128 pages
Michael O'Mara, October 2017
Banish winter blues and embrace the frosty months by cosying up with Emma Mitchell's nature-inspired collection of crafts.
From delicate silver jewellery, paper-craft decorations and crocheted mittens, to foraged infusions, delicious recipes and nature diaries, Making Winter is filled with projects designed to fend off dreariness in the winter months.