Interview with Sheffield author Joe Shute

Joe Shute is a Sheffield based author and journalist with a passion for the natural world. He contributes feature articles to The Daily Telegraph and is pursuing postgraduate research at Manchester Metropolitan University, supported by the Leverhulme Unit for the Design of Cities of the Future (LUDeC). In the past, Joe gained experience as a trainee reporter at the Halifax Evening Courier before becoming crime correspondent for the Yorkshire Post. He published three books. I met Joe for a coffee at the MMU campus. Below is a transcript of our conversation.

Could you please first introduce yourself and tell what do you do now? What career wise duties do you have now?

My name is Joe Shute, and I'm currently a PhD student at the Leverhulme Unit for the Design of Cities of the Future at Manchester Metropolitan University, which is (LUDeC), its acronym. I'm also currently teaching creative writing and creative nonfiction in the English department at MMU. Outside the university, I'm an author of creative nonfiction published by Bloomsbury. Got three books published by them: “Stowaway: The Disreputable Exploits of the Rat”, which is published in April'24, “Forecast: A Diary of the Lost Seasons”, which came out in 2021, and “Shadow Above: The Fall and Rise of The Raven”, which came out in 2018. And alongside that, I'm a national newspaper journalist, I write a weekly column for The Daily Telegraph, and write lots of features for them as well. And also write features for things like the independent and the Eye, New Scientist.

Stowaway: The Disreputable Exploits of The Rat, Joe Shute, Bloomsbury, 2024

And now closer to questions about your work. What inspired you to start writing and how has your journey evolved over the years? And how did you come to the North? I know that you're originally from the south.

yeah, I grew up in London, but I went to Leeds University, and studied history there. And actually, that was really what put me up. I knew I always wanted to be a writer, even when I was doing history at university. But I was kind of always more interested in the sort of practice of writing, I guess, storytelling, aspects of writing rather than the kind of the form and the nuts and bolts of it that you might do in an English Literature degree. But I did actually, it was a very literature-based history degree. It was on Russian literature, in fact, and comparing Tolstoy's depictions of the upper class in Russia in the 19th century to the reality of life and Russia in the 19th century. And the falsity in the upper classes.

From then I started in local newspapers. So I worked for a newspaper called the Halifax Evening Courier, which was like a daily local newspaper in Halifax and then on to the Yorkshire Post. It's based in Leeds, and it's the regional newspaper for Yorkshire. For regional papers, it's a really good one because they do national news as well. And when I was working for them, I was the crime correspondent. But it was also when the war in Afghanistan was going on. And I went out to Afghanistan for about a month with the Yorkshire Regiment, the soldiers that are out there. Was posted all over Helmand province with them, writing about daily realities of being in war, it was terrifying. But it was from then then I got the job at the Telegraph.

And I started writing, I'd always written fiction outside of journalism, I didn't really know about creative nonfiction, because it's quite a new field of writing, as you will know. And when I started at the Telegraph, I started to specialise a lot more in nature and the environment, which I loved. And that sort of coincided with what happened in the 2000s and 2010s. In England, where there was this massive boom in creative nonfiction and place writing.

And what triggered it?

It was things like Robert McFarlane's The Wild Places, which came out in 2007. And then H is for Hawk that won a massive literary prize. And I remember writing about it in the Telegraph, it was a real surprise that a woman writing about birds had won the Costa prize. And that really sort of got me; it was two things coming together for me perfectly, because I had my interest in nature that had been a long-standing thing. And suddenly there was a real appetite in the publishing industry to publish books on this stuff as well. So I actually approached Bloomsbury on Twitter initially, and told them that I had a few ideas - The Raven's being one of them. And they got back to me on Twitter. And we met up for a coffee in London. And then got the contract to do the first one. And it's just sort of carried on from there.

Are there any specific literary influences that has shaped your work?

Yeah, there's lots. It's hard to pick.

Joe Shute

 What is your earliest reading memory, for example? Let's dig from there.

My favourite book as a child is Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson. And it's about Bonnie Prince Billy, in the 19th century escaping the English that was sort of marauding over the Highlands. And as a kid, I loved everything. In fact, I didn't know it back then, but it was place writing. It was about them going through the Moors, and the Lochs and this incredibly romantic connection to the landscape. As a kid, I loved it. I read that book endlessly and still go back to it now.

Any books that you regret not reading yet?

I often think that I should read James Joyce. And I've never got around to it. I've tried a few times. I tried in lockdown. Actually, that was my last attempt. And it still didn't work for me.

Did you manage Moby-Dick?

Yeah, yeah, I enjoyed Moby-Dick, that good storytelling. But every time I've tried to read James Joyce, I feel you really need to like strap yourself in.

What are you currently reading or plan to read? Is your reading material always connected to what you're about to write about, or you have some reading for pleasure?

I go through phases. When I'm writing a book, I will deliberately only read creative nonfiction, or things that are connected to what it is that I'm writing. Because I feel that just helps me so much in my own writing, as I'm going along. And then when I've finished the writing projects, which I sort of have at the moment with the rats, I allow myself that time to just read whatever it is that I want and read a lot more fiction, and enjoy often more contemporary stuff and things entirely unrelated to nature writing. So I've just read My Year of Rest and Relaxation, by Ottessa Moshfegh, which is a great book. And the next on my list is The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, that won a big literary prize last week. And it's a book set in Ireland. It's about growing up and trying to escape the small Irish town, and the envy of friendship. It sounds really good. I'll talk a little bit in my classes. I can't wait to read it.

So any most interesting thing that you learned recently from a book?

I'm teaching an MA, reading creative nonfiction at the MMU and we've got a reading list of different creative nonfiction books and Robert McFarland’s The Wild Places was one of them. And I'd read it years ago, and I don't know if you do this, but I'm obsessive about turning over corners in books I'm reading. And when it's a book that has meant a lot to me, I like get it off the shelves, and it's just covered in dog-eared pages that I've marked for some reason. So, it's interesting going back and seeing what made me mark those 10 years previously. And there was one great fact about the number of wind directions in the UK.

So, the number you think North, South, East West, but there's something like 57 different wind directions that can because of the positioning of the UK and the different sorts of oceanic currents that come this way. And I thought that was pretty cool.

That's actually one of the book ideas that I have. To have a book on, say, 10-15-20 most famous winds, because they have very long history. Probably not that relevant these days. But previously, they were of paramount importance for people. And not only for the sailors and traders and fishermen, but also people who just were living there. So they constructed the houses in a way that the wind didn't interfere with the quality of life.

Great idea. And there's the one in France, the Mistral and it's linked to mental health.

There is actually one British book about that and it's a very good first attempt at the subject. I will send you the name [See the illustration below - DP]. But still, there are so many more.

Do you know this one in the UK? A famous one in Cumbria called the Helm Wind.

Yeah. I think I've read about it.

I've never seen it, it only blows seven times a year, but it's the only named wind.

Where the Wild Winds Are: Walking Europe's Winds from the Pennines to Provence. Nick Hunt. Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2017.

Yeah. A very interesting phenomenon. Any book that you often give as a gift, which is not written by you?

I don’t give my own books as gifts. People have to buy them (laughs)

I think Ted Hughes is often a lovely gift. I love his writing about Yorkshire and nature. He writes about winds. He wrote a fantastic poem on wind, actually. He writes about fishing. I love fishing as well. I go fishing with my dad a lot.

In terms of themes that you often explore, it's mostly nature, correct?

Yeah. It's in each book I've written and the PhD I'm doing. There's a point of conflict, and really interesting overlap between natural history, social history and cultural history. And it's where those three things collide, it's where I'm most interested in. So the reason I chose ravens is because they're an animal that carries so much of human myth and mythology and folklore. Rats, even more so. So I'm interested in them as just natural beings and what it is and how they live and all that kind of stuff. But for me, that isn't enough. It's that sort of human interaction that really kind of fascinates me. And how animals have made it into our culture as well. And how we impose human stories on animals.

And you also demonstrate this interest in your newspaper articles, correct?

Yeah.

And it's not only mythical animals like rats or ravens. It's also some snakes – adders was it?

Yeah, I've written about adders.

And yesterday about the deer. And the peregrine falcon before that.

Yeah. I mean, it's a pretty wide range of natural life. Yeah, and particularly for the Telegraph, I've written lots about nature abroad as well. So I've been to Russia for example, to Vladivostok and to write about Amur tigers. And I've been to India to write about great Indian bustards. Very rare. there's only about a 100 of them.

Then Panama.

Yeah, although that was more about refugees and migrants. Though I do less, much less of that now. I like the writing I do now, because I can't do as much writing as I used to, because of teaching and PhD. So now I really only do environmental stuff.

Mostly in the UK?

Mostly in the UK. Yeah, I didn't want to be away from home as much as I was in the past.

Yeah, you did quite an impressive traveling for some of your books.

Yeah. Yeah.

To be frank with you, I think the budget was not that sustainable. I was trying to do the maths - how match did it cost and how much it would yield…

Wouldn't have stacked up at all. You're right, Denis. But what I did was I combined it with newspaper reporting as well. So when I was in Tanzania, I was writing a different article for the Telegraph.

About the dictator who died denying the COVID?

We did actually, they tried to send us when we were there to Zanzibar, where there was a COVID deniers’ colony. But you can just get arrested so easily... I was there writing an article about rats for the Telegraph, actually, but a completely different project to APOPO [Training of rats for minesweeping, covered in his book - DP]. This is in the book as well. Similarly, when I went to Alberta, my brother lives in Vancouver. So I was in Vancouver visiting him anyway. So I found ways to cut corners to make it cheap. ‘Cause you're right, you don't get much money from these books.

So how would you describe your unique style?

It's not really for me to say that.

I try and keep things readable for readers. I try to wear research lightly, in what I write.

I find some creative nonfiction, particularly in place writing, can be overly expressive of the writer’s own kind of Intelligence and research. And actually, as a reader, that puts me off quite a lot sometimes. So I try and make it non-academic and relatable for a wide group of people. And as I've said, already, I try and bring in lots of characters as well. So I don't make it all about me. Because I find other people's stories really the reason why I wanted to do journalism, really interesting, much more than my own. So you know, it's for me, that's different to a lot of what's out there. There's lots of different people in there as well, different characters.

In the rat book I really liked the way you always introduce your own family's perspective on how you made the U-turn from total aversion to being a rat enthusiast.

But equally like, I didn't want it to just be about that. So there's lots of different people in there. I don't know if you've got to the rat catchers chapter for example, they're kind of doing it the old way. And kind of the same in the Forecast - that it's those other stories that I really rely on.

So as far as I can understand, you write a book every three years?

Yeah.

Why will you maintain that tempo? Or is just a fluke of coincidence?

It's just how timings got when I'm writing something. I've always got another idea in my head. And as I get closer to the project I'm working on..

You're hating it!

I hate that project more and love the project I'm not doing yet. I think a lot of writers have this. So that's just what's happened every time. I mean, I have another book in mind with something related to my PhD, but I'm not sure exactly what that will be yet. But I want to keep [the pace - DP]…I think maybe one every three years is a lot. And actually,

that's probably not sustainable.

Joe's first book - A Shadow Above: The Fall and Rise of the Raven, Bloomsbury, 2018.

Do you know other writers who make a book every year?

Yeah, I know. But I get so immersed in the things that I'm writing about that like doing it in a year will be like, there's no way I could do.

Anyhow, how many books do you read, for writing your own? Do you always read them in the library or you buy them or…?

Mainly in the library, the British Library in London is so useful for the kind of stuff I do, because particularly the rats book, there's so many 19th century pamphlets that have been written about rats that you can't access them anywhere. But they're all there.

I saw a couple of tweets with photos of those.

Yeah, yeah. So things like that. But oh, like hundreds and hundreds of books for each one that I write.

I have a pet book project, which I think I will never write. But still, I have a folder on my Goodreads account where I put the books that might be of some use to it. So it's about 500 already.

Wow.

Sometimes I put books on the same subject just by different authors, who’re discussing different aspects of such and such, because, for example, the conquering of the Everest Mountain, of course, has a huge layer of literature, very different perspectives.

What I find though, it's probably a journalistic training when you have to interview someone, and haven't read their book and you're like, Shit, I'm gonna go meet them in like 20 minutes. So you get very good at reading, just picking little bits out. So there won't be books that I read cover to cover, but you'll skim through them and take out the bits that you need.

Well, that's because we don't have 25 hours in a day. And now some questions about Manchester. What was your experience with the Manchester literary scene growing up?

I wanted to come here to MMU for a number of years before I actually saw this PhD opportunity. I knew about some of the writers attached to it, loved reading them anyway. And I knew about the centre of place writing when it started in 2020. But it was kind of building up before that already. So for me this is the place and I've wanted to get into it for years and years. So yeah, I've been aware of it for a long time.

I noticed that you discussed your previous book, The Forecast with University of Manchester geography students.

Oh, yeah.

 Forecast: A Diary of the Lost Seasons. Joe Shute, Bloomsbury Wildlife, 2021

So your books have appeal to the universities. And, apparently, the professors who involve you into some interaction with the students. And how did they find your book?

They like it! It was interesting, because they were geographers, so I don't think they normally read books like that, and certainly didn't.

We should mention to our readers what the Forecast is about.

It's a book about climate change and the seasons in Britain. It was based on weather column I've written for the Telegraph for 12 years and still write every week. And it's about the kind of folklore and the seasons and our connection to the weather. But it's not necessarily a scientific connection, it’s like the personal connection. And I wanted to use that column… it gets loads of letters from readers, I get several of these letters, compared to anything else.

Paper ones too?

There are many old people. Exactly. And I wanted to do something that pulls together those different connections to the weather, and also made climate change real for people. Particularly when I started writing the book, climate change was seen here in the UK as something that was happening somewhere else. That's less the case now, this is the wettest February on record, as you will know, Denis, but I wanted it to make people aware of the daily reality of climate change and how it is impacting all of our lives in all kinds of different ways. And shaping the stories that we tell as well. And then it was a personal memoir as well: while I was writing me and my wife were trying-failing to have a kid as well. So it was kind of connecting those two stories of disruptive rhythms basically.

And yeah, the students, they enjoyed it. I got some really nice feedback from them. But it was very different to what they normally read, I think.

Okay, and could you please talk to us more about your participation in the PhD program? What is so special about having creative writing in Manchester and the MMU and not in some other place in the UK?

I mean, it's something in this university, it's a guy called Professor Steven Miles who’s in charge of it. And there's 15 of us in the LUDeC. And the idea is, each one of us is doing some sort of often creative practice, but not necessarily creative practice, but often, they're creative. They're linked in some way to create sustainable and equitable cities. The idea is our PhDs are slightly different from traditional PhDs. So, we're involved with external organisations, who are supporting our work. And the idea is the creative stuff we do actually have some sort of real-world impacts in the city as well through those organisations. There're three cohorts, three years, some in the second year. And we all do sort of different stuff.

And at the end of the of the third year, you will have a book published?

I don't know.

Could you tell us more about your project, the book project, because it's very closely connected to Manchester? About the Irk River?

Yeah, so it's the about the river Irk. And it's a Lost River in Manchester. “Lost” in inverted commas. There was a Council report a few years ago, which said the river had become culturally lost to the people of Manchester. It runs through the northeast of the city, which is the most deprived bits of Manchester, and it's also where the industrial revolution started as well. So for the history of Manchester, the Irk was incredibly important. It had more textile mills upon it than any other comparable river in the country in the 19th century. And it's a place where people like Engels [were writing]… he wrote a lot about the river Irk and the conditions of the working class in England. Isabella Banks, don’t know if you know her - 19th century novel, The Manchester Man, it's good one. And she begins it on the river and flood. So it was once a really central River in the imagination, the folk memory of Manchester, and over the course of the 20th century that totally disappeared. So my project is about reconnecting people to the river. And using those stories of the river to rewrite its history for a new generation basically.

But did you talk to people? Does that name ring a bell for them, the Mancunians?

A lot of people who I've worked with, even though they live in the neighbourhood, the river runs through, they've never heard of the river before.

Because the Irwell is so much more popular.

Yeah, the Irwell was more popular, the Medlock even, but it is quite a small river, the Irk. And people don't feel safe to walk along a lot of it. So it is lost in people's minds.

But since you're writing about and researching that local river that means that that brought you in contact with the local community? You told me that you spoke about that project to the residents of Northeast Manchester – North City Library?

Yeah, we've been doing workshops for a year now. We started in March last year, and we've worked with seven different community groups. And it's a mix of primary school children, teenagers. Going right the way up to 70-80 year olds, the workshops overall had like 200 people participating in them. And each group have worked with not just one workshop. So each group has done four workshops. So we've really built up like a lovely relationship between each group as well. And we had a celebration of their work that they produced on Wednesday at North City Library, and it was a big launch event. And the different groups all presented their works. We had people reading poetry, people singing folk songs connected to the neighbourhoods that the river goes through. People presenting their artwork as well. We've done things that make use of the eels. The Irk used to be famous for them because the river, when there was the textile industry around, sheep fat would get poured into the river and the eels would love it and it was known for these huge eels.

Anacondas )

Yeah, exactly. And we made clay river eels with some a few groups and painted them up and told the stories about the eels that used to be in the river. We did collect bottles that have been chucked in the river… mud lurking. But then we made potions to heal the river. And the kids would kind of read out their potions while like scooping up river water with these bottles and pouring them back in and stuff. And yes, it's been really nice. There's been some things published out of it so far.

Are there any plans of cleaning it up, or?

Yeah, so the reason why my PhD was launched was because at the bottom end of the Irk, there's a massive 4-billion-pound regeneration going on, which is called the Victoria North Development and they're basically regenerating the whole of the lower Irk valley and going to include a lot of green space around the river connected to that. So the idea of my project is that the work I'm doing feeds into that regeneration program. So it makes them actually change how they're going to design the river so it is more accessible to people.

Do you manage to find or uncover any folklore or myths connected to that river? Some mediums who have ended their lives in it or some mystical creatures?

Definitely there's some of that and actually there's modern day stuff connected... My favourite piece of Irk folklore is of old grave digger called Old Canky. Have you heard of Middleton in Manchester? It's a town just beyond the M60. And the Irk flows through that before it comes into the city centre. And the way the story goes is there was a grave digger who was based in Middleton church, and he would, in the dead of night, go and dig up bodies that have been buried in the churchyard, and float them by boat along the river Irk down into the centre of the city and then sell them to students for medical experiments.

And "River voices” poetry that you had at the MMU, what is it?

An artist I've collaborated on with my workshops - Jackie Morris - she's a textile artist based at MMU. And she has created for my project these beautiful boats that are woven out of organic materials. And every group I've worked with, each one of them has woven one of these boats for the river, and written their poetry or wishes for the river on them. So we've got this lovely collection of seven boats that contain this shared future of the Irk. And Jackie and I also decided to collaborate on a river voices exhibition. Jackie's doing work on the river Lugg in Herefordshire. And we thought we'd combine our two river projects and invite people to send in poetry from anywhere that was connected to water. And we had a really nice response. We did it through the poetry library. And we exhibited that down at Oxford Road last year.

So where it was exhibited?

At the MMU – 70, Oxford Road, it's next to the station.

So the question that you probably have already answered, do you write about Manchester in your own writing? Well, that's forthcoming.

And yes, I'm doing lots about that.

So does it inspire your writing? Manchester, apparently?

Yeah. It does, because the city, as I mentioned conflicts between natural cultural social histories, Manchester is such an interesting example of a city of such conflict, where the modern is often at the expense of what existed before these gleaming skyscrapers. Compared to what were, and that's happening in the river Irk as well, you know, that demolishing entire neighbourhoods to do this regeneration. So there's so many kinds of stories caught up in that people affected by that as well. So yeah, no, it definitely does.

You even researched damselflies along the river Irk. How come?

It was a beautiful moment. A lot of the work I'm doing on the Irk is about nature returning to the river, so like a lot of post-industrial UK rivers, it was declared biologically dead, basically, in the 1970s, where meaning it sustained no life at all. And it's still heavily polluted. There's sewage flowing into it the whole time. But even still, wildlife is returning to the Irk. So when I've been down there, I've seen incredible things. I've seen kingfishers. And normally you find them in the Peak District and in really clear upland streams. I've seen the white egrets. And there's brown trout, back in the water.

Otters and beavers?

No, no beavers. I've been told there's otters there. But I don't believe that. I don't think that's true. But the building blocks is the insects - so the insects are coming back, and there was this beautiful moment when we were doing the potion poems that I told you about. So I was standing with this group of kids from Bowker Vale Primary School. And we'd all written these poems, and we base them on Macbeth, you know, the three witches. And so they've done these kind of very funny poems about mixing together with the microplastics and sewage and creating this muddy healing remedy. And we all were down by the river, it’s a lovely sunny day, and we all stood on a little sandbank in the river and poured this water out. And once the last poem was done, we stood around thinking like what’s next, and then this damselfly appeared - this beautiful blue and black damselfly flew past us and went down the river and we were a group of about 15 of us and we were all just amazed, it was such a lovely moment. It felt like we conjured it. And actually, I wrote about it for Hinterlands creative nonfiction magazine - they had a climate writing special in January, which got published so I wrote a piece co-produced with the young people of that Bowker Vale so some of their writing and some of my writing was published.

Very interesting! Another magazine outlet, where we can read your work.

Yeah! They accept a lot of creative nonfiction submissions from everyone. So it’s a good one that to look at if you're interested.

What are your favourite artistic spots in Manchester or what are your favourite writing sports? That might inspire you or you like sitting there and contemplating?

I love Manchester's waterways, probably won't surprise you. I've walked down the canal from Old Trafford the other day towards Stretford. And it's very bleak and industrial. Like sewage works, gasworks. rubbish dumps, shopping carts in the canal. And I saw the biggest rat I've ever seen in my life. There are hundreds of rats here. But as a kind of form of psychogeography and exploration I find them so interesting. So let's say the waterways are what inspires me most about Manchester.

Very good. And the next question, I'm not sure you'd have an answer. But what do you recommend as the first steps to entering Manchester literary scene? What were your own first steps?

There are always things being advertised for submissions for stuff, I've noticed for literary... I mean, this isn't necessarily Manchester related, actually. Maybe for Manchester first steps would be go to event, there's loads of events on the whole time, go to events that would inspire you, you think would be interesting. And just go and listen to what people say. Meet people. Like book launches. Or there's always literary event open mics. And there's always open mic readings going on and stuff like that. There's so many poetry open mics in Manchester.

And where does it lead?

It’s a way of meeting people. And it's a way of connecting with people.

Do people who have influence actually visit such events?

Yeah, that's a good point.

You can go there and read some of your poetry, and that doesn't necessarily mean that you will see it in black…

Yeah, no, no, that's true. I mean, the more sort of, I guess, if you're going to be more like, how do I meet the people who can make a difference? Like getting in touch with individual lecturers is always a good one. So David Cooper, who's my supervisor now and is the co-director of the Center of place writing. We've previously followed each other on Twitter and stuff like that. And it was through him that I found out that there's a PhD exists actually because he advertises it on Twitter. Same as my first book. So, find people that do the stuff you're interested in, and read what they do and follow them on social media. And, yeah, that's probably more constructive advice, actually.

Thank you, Joe! I think that concludes our interview.

Okay. Thank you, Denis! There were some good questions there!

Thanks!