Karen Lloyd
Karen Lloyd is an award-winning writer of non-fiction and poetry based in Kendal, Cumbria. Her most recent book, Abundance, was longlisted for the James Cropper Wainwright Prize for Conservation Writing in 2022. Both her debut, The Gathering Tide, which explores the edgelands of Morecambe Bay, and her second book, The Blackbird Diaries, won Lakeland Book Awards and were selected as books of the year, in the Observer and the Birdwatcher’s Handbook. She has contributed to the Guardian Country Diary, Royal Geographical Society magazine, BBC Wildlife and Countryfile, and she edited and produced Curlew Calling Anthology to raise awareness of curlew restoration. Karen gained her PhD from Lancaster University, where she now teaches part time on the Creative Writing MA and is writer in residence at the Future Places Centre.
The Gathering Tide
by Karen Lloyd
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“Evocative, muscular.” – Kathleen Jamie.
Karen Lloyd takes us on a deeply personal journey around the 60 miles of coastline that make up ‘nature’s amphitheatre’.
Embarking on a series of walks that take in beguiling landscapes and ever-changing seascapes, Karen tells the stories of the places, people, wildlife and history of Morecambe Bay. So we meet the King’s Guide to the Sands, discover forgotten caves and islands that don’t exist, and delight in the simple beauty of an oystercatcher winging its way across the ebbing tide.
As we walk with Karen, she explores her own memories of the bay, making an unwitting pilgrimage through her own past and present, as well as that of the bay. The result is a singular and moving account of one of Britain’s most alluring coastal areas.
Prizes and awards
Lakeland Book of the Year 2016, Striding Edge Prize, WINNER
REVIEWS OF The Gathering Tide
“Undeniably beautiful writing … Lloyd’s lyrical prose is smooth, like a pebble softened by the tide… A tribute by a gifted writer to the place she calls home” Caught by the River
“Karen Lloyd's The Gathering Tide creates its own kind of song-line along the edge of one of England's last and richest wilderness areas – Morecambe Bay. The writing in her cycle of stories about humans and nature is full of earthy realism, authentic observation and quiet lyricism. It is a hugely impressive debut.” Mark Cocker, author and naturalist.
“Entrancing … exquisite descriptions … sparkles with lyrical imagery, mapping the history of the shores and sands of this endlessly fascinating bay.” Miriam Darlington for BBC Wildlife
