Anna North, whose debut novel Bog Queen has entered paperback, says the current fascination with bogs stems from their mystique and the promise of retreat into wild, uncharted spaces. She notes that fashion designers are even incorporating peat into couture and Instagram memes help users pick bog witch names.
North has read extensively on the subject, citing Pulitzer Prize‑winner Annie Proulx’s Fen, Bog, and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis as a primer on wetland types. She also recommends Kay Chronister’s The Bog Wife, a fable set in West Virginia that blends humor with mossy darkness, and Seamus Heaney’s collection of bog poems, particularly “The Grauballe Man.”
For those curious about broader wetlands, North points to Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian’s Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature, which explores gender and sexuality in New York’s plant and animal worlds, and Rachel Cusk’s Second Place, a novel set on a marsh that has divided Cusk fans.
North also highlights Ryan Emanuel’s On the Swamp: Fighting for Indigenous Environmental Justice, which chronicles the Lumbee people’s relationship to Robeson County’s wetlands and critiques the exploitation of Indigenous burial sites. Finally, she mentions Sid Sharp’s picture book Bog Myrtle, a whimsical tale about two sisters, conservation, and a watchful bog.