Sophie is a writer based on Dartmoor, with a passionate interest in our relationship with wild places. Her memoir, The Green Hill: Letters to a Son, is about the sudden and unexpected death of her son Felix, and how her relationship with the natural world changed in the light of this devastating event. It is out in paperback with Wilton Square Books in April 2026.
Her latest book, Rock Idols: a guide to Dartmoor in 28 tors, with her husband, artist Alex Murdin was published in April 2025. She is also the co-author, with Matt Newbury, of five wild swimming guides. She is co-founder of the Dartmoor Tors Festival, which first took place in May 2025. For many years she worked as a reporter and producer for BBC News in the South West.
REVIEWS: THE GREEN HILL
‘Raw, unflinching …a visceral exploration of grief … I can’t recommend it highly enough’ Rachel Joyce
‘Heartbreakingly beautiful… so intensely vivid that I felt I was there, swimming in a silvery cloud of phosphorescence underneath the Milky Way, wandering around the ancient hut circles, catching glimpses of buzzards and curlews Fiona Robertson, author of Stone lands
Sophie Pierce takes us to a place that none of us wants to visit. But there we discover extraordinary riches – riches that will transform us. This is a book about what it means to be a human, and that, we find, is a high, deep, demanding calling, of terrible beauty. Charles Foster, New York Times Bestselling author of Being a Beast.
“ The Green Hill is an extraordinary book…I thought of the fairy tale in which a captured princess must weave clothes from stinging nettles: Sophie Pierce has wrought something beautiful and useful from the darkest pain.” Cressida Connolly, novelist and critic