City of Trees

How do we take in the beauty of our planet while processing the losses? What trees can survive in the city? Which animals can survive in the wild? How do any of us—humans, animals, trees—find a forest we can call home?


In these moving, thought-provoking essays Sophie Cunningham considers the meaning of trees and our love of them. She chronicles the deaths of both her fathers, and the survival of P-22, a mountain lion in Griffith Park, Los Angeles; contemplates the loneliness of Ranee, the first elephant in Australia; celebrates the iconic eucalyptus and explores its international status as an invasive species. 


City of Trees is a powerful collection of nature, travel and memoir writing set in the context of global climate change. It meanders through, circles around and sometimes faces head on the most pressing issues of the day. It never loses sight of the trees.


Sophie Cunningham is the author of four books, Geography, Bird, Melbourne, and Warning: The Story of Cyclone Tracy. She is a former publisher and editor, was a co-founder of The Stella Prize and is now an Adjunct Professor at RMIT University’s Non/fiction Lab.


‘[Cunningham] creates a convincing sense of time and place, and can carry a reader with her telling observations and insights into the emotional lives of her characters.’ Australian on Bird

‘Sophie Cunningham’s Warning: The Story of Cyclone Tracy I defy anyone to put down.’ Helen Garner on Warning: The Story of Cyclone Tracy