Reimagining Wales: Alison Layland’s speculative novel explores identity, language and the climate emergency

Dr Gemma June Howell

What does Welsh identity look like in the wake of environmental collapse? In her bold new novel After the Clearances, author Alison Layland casts her gaze into the near future to ask how culture, language and community survive in a fractured, post-pandemic world.

While climate fiction is often dominated by global-scale narratives or distant dystopian tropes, Layland offers something rarer: a climate fiction novel grounded in the language, rhythms and politics of Wales. A Welsh-English translator and environmental activist, she draws inspiration from Welsh oral traditions, political movements, and the precariousness of minority cultures under pressure.

Talking to Honno editor, Gemma June Howell, Layland shares her writing process, journey and influences of collective resistance, belonging and the uncomfortable truths that could emerge when the future is shaped by the failures of the past.

What inspired you to write After the Clearances? Was there a particular moment or event that sparked the idea?

I’ve always been concerned with environmental issues, and this was the underlying theme of my second novel, Riverflow. In 2019, the year that novel was published, I took part in the XR (Extinction Rebellion) climate protests in London and Cardiff.

Although we succeeded in raising awareness of the climate and nature crises, and many official bodies, including the Westminster government itself, declared climate emergencies, it soon felt that little was being done to back up the words with action.

To me, awareness-raising through protest is one way of achieving aims, but work at a community, grass-roots level is equally important. Among other things, I wanted to use my writing to inspire people to engage with the climate and nature crisis, and to consider its likely consequences.

The novel is set in a climate-ravaged Wales in 2056. How did you go about imagining this future while keeping it grounded in Welsh culture and history?

Until recently, much speculative climate fiction has been set in distant futures, usually dystopian. If you want to change hearts and minds, you need story, but if the story is too far removed from people’s everyday lives, it remains as just that – a good story but remote, unrelatable. Riverflow was praised by a number of reviewers for being grounded in present-day reality.

Although After the Clearances is set in the future – I chose the 2050s because this is the target date of the Paris Agreement of 2015 – I hope it’s a credible, relatable future, with enough positivity to give people hope for the future rather than despair. One way of achieving relatability was by using specific cultural and recent historical references, and projecting their consequences forward into the next three decades.

The title evokes echoes of the Highland Clearances. How important was it to draw on historical trauma in exploring contemporary and future challenges?

A result of the ever-increasing divide between the ultra-rich few and the rest of us, I envisaged the government’s Resettlement policy (dubbed the Clearances by most people, the Digartrefu – making homeless – by the Welsh) as the ultimate injustice: rural populations are forcibly resettled in new towns, ostensibly to facilitate the distribution of resources, but probably as much to enable greater authoritarian control. This demonstrates a total failure to understand the importance of community.

Community is one of the most important resources we have in facing crises – in our current times a strong, cohesive community is essential for building resilience to tackle the effects of climate change, both in the future and those such as flooding, wildfires or heatwaves that are already happening.

Despite the Clearances, and excessive clampdowns on protest and dissent, resistance has not been crushed entirely – as has been the case throughout history. The Seeder community on my fictional island of Ynys Hudol live apart, of necessity, but are nurturing a vision of a sustainable way of life that they hope one day to take out into the world.

Can you tell us more about the Seeders and their way of life? How did you research or imagine a sustainable, self-sufficient community?

The Seeder community was founded with the objective of developing a sustainable, self- sufficient way of life. To do so is more manageable in a small community, most members of which have chosen to be there – although even then, human tensions can and will arise – but just as they would like to build on their model and one day take it out into the world, I hope some of their practices can both reflect and inspire ideas in the real world.

Their community is based on egalitarian, non-hierarchical principles, with rotating leadership and inclusive day-to-day decision-making by deliberative democracy in the form of weekly Gatherings, which also include entertainment to provide a focal point and give cohesion to the community. I was helped in visioning this kind of society by my involvement in establishing Oswestry Climate Action Hub (OsCAH), many of whose principles and values have been embodied in the Seeders’ ethos.

Regarding the practicalities of day-to-day life, I wrote substantial parts of the novel during stays on Ynys Enlli/Bardsey Island (where all but a limited amount of home-grown, farmed and fished produce has to be brought over from the mainland, the houses have minimal solar electricity limited to essentials such as a fridge, and spring water on tap is for drinking and cooking only, with the rest being collected in rainwater cisterns.

I found it a really grounding, positive experience to feel the respect that comes from complete awareness of what we use as individuals. This, as well as the beautiful landscapes and amazing wildlife, all fed in to my depiction of the Seeders’ lives.

Your characters, Glesni and Bela are such different yet compelling voices – how did you approach writing from their perspectives? Did one come to you more easily than the other?

I’m not a planner – until the second-draft stage, when I plan meticulously – and I don’t necessarily write in linear fashion. I’d write scenes as they came to me, roughly in sequence, before fitting everything together, jigsaw-like, in later drafts.

So I might write, say, a couple of Glesni chapters, or a couple of Bela chapters, and immerse myself in their worlds. I found that both their voices came to me relatively easily, although Glesni’s chapters contain more world-building and thus sometimes required more conscious thought while writing. Bela’s untamed, train-of-thought voice simply flowed – there must be a wild side of me seeking out!

I’m generally quite meticulous, reading back and checking as I go along, but sometimes it does you good simply to let go. That said, with both Glesni and Sandy on the island, and Bela and Winter in the mainland chapters, it was interesting to view the world from their contrasting points of view.

As a literary translator, how has your work in translation influenced your own writing – especially a novel so rooted in the rhythms of language and place?

Translation, and the ability to speak and read in other languages, has heightened my awareness of the musicality of language, and the importance of voice in conveying character and atmosphere. As a linguist I began learning Welsh as soon as we came here to live, almost thirty years ago – it was even through the medium of Welsh that I found my own writer’s voice.

There are snippets of Welsh throughout the novel, and on the whole I try to be subtle about conveying the meaning to non-Welsh readers – rather than give a direct translation, I prefer to suggest it from the context. This is particularly relevant with Bela and Winter – she refuses to speak English to him, as her own form of resistance to all that has happened, so any instances where the meaning remains uncertain represents his frustration.

I took a similar approach to the snippets of the Croatian language in my debut, Someone Else’s Conflict.

The novel is set during a time of multiple pandemics, in a world shaped by authoritarianism and environmental collapse. Did recent events inform your depiction of this future?

Very much so. I began writing it pre-Covid, and the pandemic made me realise that my idea of deadly plagues was rooted more in dystopian fiction than reality.

Although I modified the ‘plague’ aspect in the light of experience, I do envisage more than one pandemic in the intervening period between now and the novel’s present – a likely consequence both of humans’ encroaching on nature paving the way for zoonotic diseases, and of pathogens’ resistance to antibiotics increasing to dangerous levels.

Like many people, I’ve become increasingly concerned about the government clampdowns on peaceful protest in the UK. The branding of protesters as terrorists, with the implication that imprisoned protesters are effectively political prisoners, is a strong feature of the novel’s backstory. This has been borne out by recent developments such as disproportionate jail sentences for climate protesters, and a nonviolent protest group being proscribed as a terrorist organisation as I write.

After the Clearances builds on the world introduced in your earlier novel Riverflow. How are the two connected, and what made you want to return to this world?

Although After the Clearances is not a direct sequel, there are connections. Riverflow takes place in the present day, but largely deals with the same issues: living sustainably, tackling the effects of climate change and the effectiveness or otherwise of protest. The latter in particular is a bone of contention between the two protagonists, Bede and Elin Sherwell.

In the same way that I wanted to envisage how the issues have changed in a near-future world, it was also fun to imagine what might have become of them – and a couple of other Riverflow characters – in the intervening period.

What do you hope readers take away from After the Clearances?

I hope readers will be involved with the characters and their story and, through that, be inspired to take action in the fight to tackle the climate crisis, and help to achieve resilience in their own communities – and that those who are already doing so will recognise aspects that resonate with them! I also hope to raise awareness of the importance of community and identity, with a particular focus on Welsh language and culture.

And finally, what are you working on next? Will we be seeing more from this world, or something entirely new?

I’m working on a collection of short stories within the world of After the Clearances. I’m also keen to tell Bela’s story, the circumstances that brought her to her wild life in the post-Clearances woods, and several early readers have said the same – so watch this space!

Published by Honno Welsh Women’s Press, After the Clearances is available to buy through all major bookshops and will be launching on 11 July at Llangoed Village Hall and on 19 July at Oswestry Library.