Books by Samantha Ellis
Samantha Ellis’s book Chopping Onions on my Heart: on losing and preserving culture is out now. It will be published in the US in 2026 as Always Carry Salt. She’s also the author of How to be a Heroine and Take Courage: Anne Brontë and the Art of Life. Her plays include How to Date a Feminist. She lives in London.
Interviews with Samantha Ellis
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1
Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues
by Ross Perlin -
2
Poems from the Edge of Extinction: An Anthology of Poetry in Endangered Languages
ed. Chris McCabe -
3
One & Everything
by Sam Winston -
4
Rare Tongues: The Secret Stories of Hidden Languages
by Lorna Gibb -
5
Babel: An Arcane History
by R. F. Kuang
The best books on Endangered Languages, recommended by Samantha Ellis
The best books on Endangered Languages, recommended by Samantha Ellis
Of the world’s 7000 languages, around half are expected to be extinct by the end of this century. Samantha Ellis’s mother tongue is one of them. We asked her to reflect on what we lose when we lose a way of speaking—culturally, linguistically, emotionally—and to recommend five books about endangered languages.
