Environmental crisis entails profound and often catastrophic changes to animal habitats as well as to human lives. This year’s winning lecture explores the complex and dynamic relationships between humans and animals in both the lecturer’s own work and Kingsolver’s bestselling novel. Hayden Gabriel is a novelist and also Programme Leader for Creative Writing and English Literature at the University of St Mark and St John, Plymouth. The INSPIRE Lecture explores how literature, in any of its forms, responds to and is shaped by our contact with other creatures in the context of debates around sustainability.