Across three lauded non-fiction books and countless essays and articles, Bri Lee has delivered an impeccably researched and ethically complex examination of a great number of contemporary topics. In a 2022 essay for The Guardian, it was Western storytelling under Lee’s microscope, particularly our obsession with ‘individual protagonists experiencing personal transformations’. Returning ad nauseum to this formula, argues Lee, is ‘distinctly not useful’ for understanding the slow-burn, widely dispersed crises of the modern age, most notably ‘a climate emergency that defies any sort of conflict-resolution arc’. It’s a brilliant essay, short and sharp, and with a punchy take away: ‘[It is] essential that we consider the power and the limitations of individual empathy ... there may be a better way.’