Paul Kingsnorth

Paul Kingsnorth is a writer, poet and essayist. In his younger years, he was a journalist and a passionate environmental activist, until, disillusioned, he came to the conclusion that the environmental movement was failing to achieve results because it had become part of the system — or, in his words: ‘the Machine’. Together with a friend, he subsequently founded the Dark Mountain Project, a movement of writers, artists and thinkers seeking to disrupt society, with the aim of shedding light on the problems of our time by operating outside traditional frameworks and the system’s lies. Between 2010 and 2013, the annual highlight of the Dark Mountain Project was the Uncivilisation Festival. In his most recent book, Against The Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity (2025), which has been published worldwide and received critical acclaim, Kingsnorth argues that ‘the Machine’ — the system underpinning our society, in which the belief in growth, bureaucracy and control reigns supreme — governs and transforms everything for the worse. He lives in the west of Ireland, with his family, some hens, lots of trees and a beehive.