Surrender

Blending memoir with reportage, criticism with nature writing, Surrender is a narrative non-fiction work on the changing landscape of the American West, inspired by a two-year stay in Montana. At a time of personal crisis, after losing her parents and beginning menopause, Joanna Pocock becomes fascinated with radical environmental movements. She witnesses the annual tribal bison hunt near Yellowstone Park, where she meets a scavenger community honing ancestral skills. She joins Finisia Medrano, a transsexual rewilder, to learn about life on the Hoop. She attends the Ecosex Convergence, an annual gathering of people who place their relationship with the earth above everything else. With Surrender, the winner of the 2018 Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize, Joanna Pocock offers a provocative and profound examination of life in an era of increasing climatic disruption.