Horatio Clare is a Welsh writer and broadcaster. His acclaimed memoirs, travel and children’s books include Running for the Hills (John Murray, 2006), A Single Swallow (Chatto and Windus, 2009), Down to the Sea in Ships (Vintage, 2015), Aubrey and the Terrible Yoot (Firefly Press, 2015), and the “game-changing” (The Telegraph) Heavy Light (Chatto and Windus, 2021). He has won the Somerset Maugham Award, the Branford Boase Award, and the Stanford Dolman Award. His book Your Journey Your Way (Penguin, 2024) – the recovery guide to mental health, is a Sunday Times self-help book of the year. Horatio presents ‘Is Psychiatry Working?’ on BBC Radio 4 and writes regularly for the international press. His new book, We Came By Sea: Stories of a greater Britain (Little Toller, 2025) tells the unreported story of the small boat crisis. Horatio delivers training to NHS intervention teams, lectures in non-fiction at the University of Manchester, and edits the baby-wolf.com newspaper.
Writing the Self
Join Horatio and Amy for a wide-ranging course on the craft of writing tension. Techniques studied in the week will apply to journalism, memoir, biography, travel and nature writing. The week will contain workshops on elements from recording experience through to research, from characters who live to structures that sing, from issues of law and ethics to crafting beautiful prose. There will be ample time for discussion and experimentation as we look at the art and the business of planning, writing and editing long and short-form prose, essays and books. One-on-one tutorials will give the chance to ask specific questions and offer bespoke feedback on your work.
Tutors
Horatio Clare
Amy Liptrot
Amy Liptrot grew up on a sheep farm in Orkney, Scotland who has written two bestselling memoirs: The Outrun (Canongate Books, 2016) and The Instant (Canongate Books, 2022). The Outrun won the Wainwright Prize for nature writing and the PEN Ackerely Prize for memoir, has been translated into 14 languages and adapted into a film starring Saoirse Ronan. She lives in Yorkshire and is working on a book about seaweed.
Guest Reader
Gosia Buzzanca (Digital)
Gosia Buzzanca was born in Poznań, Poland. She began publishing short stories in 2002, before moving to the UK in 2008 and earning a Creative Writing MA with distinction. In 2022, she was the recipient of the W&A Working-Class Writers’ Prize and in 2025 she was selected for Hay Festival Writers at Work programme. Her debut, a memoir, There She Goes, My Beautiful World (Calon, 2025) is out now. Gosia lives in Barry, and is currently working on her first novel.