While the word 'rainforest' might conjure images of tropical environments, their less heralded temperate

counterparts are also significant habitats, featuring cooler temperatures and an array of deciduous plants

adorned with epiphytes (Orians et al., 2013). These are complex webs of life above and below the

ground, the diversity of plants and animals taking up every available space. Bryophytes such as mosses

are prominent, representing a 'boundary layer' between the outer world and the temperate rainforest's

inner network (Burnett, 2023, 41). Temperate rainforests can be found in The United Kingdom, Ireland,

Norway, Japan, South Korea, the US, Canada, New Zealand and Tasmania. The vast temperate rainforest

of the Pacific Northwest - extending from Alaska to California - is a globally noteworthy ecosystem with

a long and intimate relationship with Indigenous lifeways. By contrast, the remaining rainforests of the

UK and Ireland are small, fragmented and little known. For Eoghan Daltun, this 'self-willed land' (2022,

195) is quite capable of looking after itself, but its future is also dependent on the anthropocentric

vagaries of economics, the possibilities and limits of conservation, and the looming threats of invasive

species and climate change. As with other types of forest, these rare and distinctive ecologies have

undergone a rapid decline. With land repurposed for agriculture, development and commercial forestry,

today many temperate rainforests are either in poor health or mere ghosts.

In the UK interest in temperate rainforests has been ignited most notably through Guy

Shrubsole's The Lost Rainforests of Britain (2022). This pivotal text was developed alongside a campaign

to map Britain's remaining temperate rainforests by helping the public to identify indicator species

(Shrubsole, 2022). The result has been the enhancement of plans to protect these rare environments. There

are multiple conservation and restoration avenues currently in place, including The England Woodland

Creation Offer (EWCO), the Keepers of Time Policy, Landscape Recovery, Rainforest Lichen Recovery

and the Environmental Improvement Plan (Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs, 2023).

Elsewhere conservation of temperate rainforests is better established; a partnership between First Nations

and Crown governments to protect Canada's Great Bear Rainforest, for example, originated in the 1990s.

This volume aims to develop growing interest in temperate rainforests with the first collection of

academic essays exploring their portrayal in literature and culture across the globe. Temperate rainforests

have been both characters and settings, and writers may include them in their work without being aware

of it. We are interested in the depictions of specific locations as well as the imagining of places beyond

geography that show the hallmarks of temperate rainforests, such as the magical Forest of Fangorn in JRR

Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1954). We are open to formal academic approaches, creative and

creative-critical essays, engagements with any form of literary or visual representation, including

reflections on the soundscapes of temperate rainforests. Possible topics include, but are not restricted to:

Final chapter manuscripts will be 7000 words long, including citations and bibliography. The deadline for

final chapters is 31st January 2026.