NEWS
Gifts for Someone Writing a Memoir
Somewhere tonight, at a kitchen table after the house has gone quiet, someone is writing about their mother. Or the farm they grew up on, or the year everything fell apart, or the country their grandparents left. If that someone is in your life, or perhaps it is you,...
How to Encourage Someone Who Wants to Write
You can usually tell. There is a notebook by the bed that never seems to fill. There are the books on craft they buy and don't open. There's the way they say "one day I'd like to write" and then change the subject. I often tell my students that there are more...
What You Actually Learn in an Online Nature Writing Course
I have been teaching writers for thirty years, and the question I am asked most often about my online nature writing course is some version of this: can you really learn to write the living world from a screen? I understand the doubt. Nature writing is about mud and...
Creative Nonfiction or Narrative Nonfiction: What’s the Difference?
My students will recognise this. The first point I make in our first session of The Art of Narrative Nonfiction is about names: the difference between creative nonfiction and narrative nonfiction. The terms overlap, they are used interchangeably by people who should...
The Difference Between Memoir and Biography
Two writers are joining Every Life an Odyssey, my memoir and biography writing course this autumn, and between them they make the whole argument of this essay before I have said a word. Register now → Ed Caesar is a staff writer at The New Yorker. He has written about...
Which Narrative Nonfiction Course is Best for Me?
The narrative nonfiction course question that most often arrives in my inbox is this: I want to take a Level 1 course, but I can't work out which one. Are they the same? Am I missing something? Which narrative nonfiction course is best for me? You're not missing...
Winnie-the-Pooh at 100: In Which Kathryn Travels to Cambridge
A few facts feel impossible until you sit with them. One is that Winnie-the-Pooh is a hundred years old. A.A. Milne and E.H. Shepard's nursery classic first appeared in 1926, and somehow that small bear of very little brain has shuffled through a full century without...
How to Write a Nonfiction Book Proposal
Here is a small, slightly maddening truth about traditional publishing: for most nonfiction books, you sell the book before you write it. Not with a finished manuscript, but with a proposal. And if the phrase "book proposal" makes you want to lie down in a darkened...
How to Write a Nonfiction Book Proposal That Agents Actually Want to Read
Every nonfiction book begins as a promise. Long before the manuscript exists, a writer must convince an agent and an editor that the book deserves to be written — and bought. That promise has a name. It is the book proposal, and learning how to write a nonfiction book...
Writing Retreat in England with Kathleen Jamie and Jon Boden
A writing retreat in England is special. A writing retreat in Devon, arguably one of the most beautiful counties in the country, makes a brilliant setting for creative inspiration: the moment when a poet reads a line aloud in a room and the air changes. The...
The Affordable Alternative to an MFA in Creative Nonfiction
Two Courses. One Destination. Your Book in the World. The Art of Narrative Nonfiction and Writing Your Nonfiction Book Proposal are now open for registration — and together, they offer an affordable alternative to an MFA in creative nonfiction. There is a particular...
Lecture & Discussion Series: What Alice Munro Teaches Narrative Nonfiction Writers (April-May-June)
There are writers who teach you things about craft. And then there are writers who teach you things about being alive. Alice Munro is both. This spring, I'm launching something new at the writing school — a mini lecture and discussion series built around...
Writing Retreat in Devon: A Celebration of Craft, Community, and Creative Joy
Ashley Court, Devon, January 9-11, 2026 In early January, when it seems all of England was covered in a surprising blanket of snow, people travelled from all over Britain to warm their artistic souls inside at Ashley Court, where a different kind of beauty took...
Winnie-the-Pooh at 100: Why This Bear Still Matters
Winnie-the-Pooh at 100: Why This Bear Still Matters In 1926, A.A. Milne published a small book for children about a bear of very little brain and his friends in an English forest. A hundred years later, that bear remains one of the most recognisable literary figures...
Gifts for Writers
30 Gifts for Writers: A Writing Teacher's Guide for 2026 Most lists of gifts for writers are written by people who sell pens. This one is written by a writing teacher. For thirty years I have taught writers in university seminar rooms, community colleges, at in-person...
Narrative Nonfiction Mentoring Path: Which to Choose?
Tier 1 or Tier 2? One of the most common questions writers ask me—usually after taking a course or two and discovering that yes, writing is in fact both beautiful and occasionally maddening—is: “What narrative nonfiction mentoring path would best help me now?” It’s an...
Writing Retreat Update (January 9-11, 2026)
Slip away from the ordinary and into the timeless beauty of the Devon countryside. In January, when the days are short and the year still new, the hills and hedgerows of Devon hold a quiet magic: mists drifting over fields, ancient oaks standing sentinel, and lanes...
Creative Nonfiction Courses This Autumn
Autumn is a season of change. Leaves shift, light softens, and the world pulls inward. Yet creativity stretches outward, reaching for new beginnings. It is in this liminal space -- between endings and beginnings -- that some of the most fertile writing lives. As the...
The Salt Path: Truth Matters in Memoir
Truth matters, especially in memoir. In the world of narrative nonfiction, the bond between author and reader rests on a quiet but profound contract: This really happened. The power of a personal story comes not just from how it is told, but from the authenticity of...
Why Every Writer Should Study Poetry
In a time when the written word floods our screens and bookshelves, it can be easy to overlook poetry as something reserved for the literary elite or wistful romantics. But for writers of all genres—essayists, memoirists, nature writers, novelists—poetry offers a...
How to Find a Writing Mentor for Creative Nonfiction
How to Find a Writing Mentor for Creative Nonfiction In the world of writing, mentorship can make all the difference. A good mentor not only helps sharpen your craft but also supports you in navigating the long, often solitary journey of transforming personal...
Writing Erotica: Five Ways to Start
A Literary Approach to Desire, Presence, and the Page For centuries, sensuality has found its way into literature not through spectacle, but through subtlety—through the charged pause, the remembered glance, the weight of longing carried in silence. Writing erotica is...
Writing Mentors: A Writer’s Trusted Weapon
Writing is often romanticised as a solitary pursuit—one writer, one desk, and the quiet hum of inspiration. Yet, the truth is that even the most accomplished writers benefit from guidance, accountability, and meaningful conversations about their work. A writing mentor...
Memoir Writing Course: From Diarist to Letter-Writer to Author
For some, a memoir writing course is the beginning. For others, it starts earlier. For me, it began with sensations. The feel of a pen in hand. The sight of my handwriting unspooling in black ink across a blank white page. The crisp sound of a turning new pages in a...