Launch Month!
Wild Women Writers' Salons - Starting 26th October 2023
Fantastic news! After a lot of planning, we are finally ready to launch the fabulous Wild Women Writers’ Salons!
STARTING OCTOBER 26th 2023
The Wild Women Writers’ Salons will run on the last Thursday of every month, alternating between day and evening events, all the way until October 2024. Our first year focuses on memoir and creative non-fiction - and what a fantastic line-up of wild women writers we have for you!
With a treasure chest of amazing writers from across the globe. these are different from your regular Zoom sessions. We're creating a welcoming and inspiring space for authors of memoirs and creative non-fiction to take a deep-dive into their writing journeys.
Each salon will feature three amazing guest women writers from across the globe. Here’s a sneak peek of what you can expect:
Dive deep into the world of words.
Hear authors share from their works.
Get a behind-the-scenes look at the creative process.
Real talk about publishing highs and lows.
Engage in some heart-to-heart during the Q&A session.
We will keep you posted about events here but if you want more, we’ve got that covered too. Just click on our paid subscription package to the Wild Women Salons Substack newsletter, and from November you will get access to recordings and exclusive extras. Think interviews, writing tips, and more – all bundled up in one fabulous package!
Remember, ticket sales & subscriptions help towards valuing and paying the amazing people who are making these salons possible - from behind the scenes to fabulous authors!
SALON 1 - Rural Landscape, Rural Lives
Thursday October 26th 2023
1 - 2.30pm online (Zoom)
Hosted by Victoria Bennett, with guests Rebecca Smith, Catrina Davies and Nicola Chester
Tickets - by donation - pay what you can (suggested donation £15/10/5)
Introducing our Salon Guests…
Rebecca Smith is a non-fiction writer from Cumbria currently based in Central Scotland. Her first book, Rural: The Lives of the Working-Class Countryside is for anyone who loves and longs for the countryside, whose family owes something to a bygone trade, or who is interested in the future of rural Britain. Starting with Rebecca Smith's own family history - foresters in Cumbria, miners in Derbyshire, millworkers in Nottinghamshire, builders of reservoirs and the Manchester Ship Canal - Rural is an exploration of our green and pleasant land, and the people whose labour has shaped it. Beautifully observed, these are the stories of professions and communities that often go overlooked.
'A thoughtful, moving, honest book that questions what it means to belong to a place when it can never belong to you' - CAL FLYN
Catrina Davies is the author of three books: Fearless (2014), Homesick (2019) and Once Upon a Raven’s Nest (2023). She was born in Snowdonia and grew up in the far west of Cornwall, where she still lives, in various sheds. Homesick was longlisted for the Baillie Gifford prize and won a Holyer an Gof award. Her latest book, Once Upon a Raven’s Nest, Once Upon a Raven’s Nest is the story of a working class man, one Thomas Hedley of Exmoor, and of the planet during the period of its great acceleration towards the current climate emergency. An unforgettable history of a life that is almost lost and an account of the destruction man has wrought on the earth in the time that Hedley worked the land, the narrative is interwoven with a sequence of factual entries that chart the impending climate catastrophe and the consequences of our collective choices to ignore the warning of an environment on the verge of collapse.
‘A rich, beautiful and deeply moving book’ GEORGE MONBIOT
Nicola Chester is an activist for nature, and has been called an ‘early, female pioneer of the new nature writing’ (Dominic Couzens). She has written for BBC Wildlife Magazine, Caught By The River, The Clearing, Country Living, The Telegraph, The Financial Times,Slightly Foxed and The Wildlife Trusts. Her debut award-winning memoir, On Gallows Down was Highly Commended in the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing, 2022, winner of the 2021 Richard Jefferies Prize for Nature Writing, and selected for Stephen Moss’s, Melissa Harrison’s and Countryfile Magazine’s ‘Best Books of 2021’. It is the story of a life shaped by landscape. From the girl catching the eye of the “peace women” of Greenham Common to the young woman protesting the loss of ancient and beloved trees, and as a mother raising a family in a tied-farm cottage in the shadow of grand, country estates, this is the story of how Nicola Chester came to write – as a means of protest. A powerful, personal story shaped by a landscape; one that ripples and undulates with protest, change, hope – and the search for home.
‘Political, passionate & personal’ ROBERT MACFARLANE
Introducing the salon host…
Victoria Bennett is an award-winning disabled poet, author, carer and founder of Wild Women Press. Her debut memoir, All My Wild Mothers: motherhood, loss and an apothecary garden, was long-listed for the Nan Shepherd Prize, and won the New Writing North Northern Debut Award. When the impact of grief, motherhood, and illness force a move to a new build social housing estate in rural Cumbria, Victoria and her young son set about transforming the rubble of the former brownfield site into a wild, apothecary garden. With no money and only the weeds they can find for free, they discover that sometimes life grows, not in spite of what is broken, but because of it. A memoir of motherhood, grief, and the archaic wisdom of plants, rooted in the familiar and forgotten that lies beneath our feet.
‘Lyrical and beautiful and feels like a haven in a cynical world - exactly the book we all need to read right now’ CATHERINE SIMPSON
TICKETS
Tickets are priced as Donation
We want to keep the salons accessible and we know times are lean. To help with this, we have made our tickets available by donation. Just decide what you can manage to pay and book via eventbrite. If you still can’t manage the ticket price, send us a message. We have a limited number of free tickets* for those who would otherwise not be able to attend.
We won’t ask for proof - just honesty.
When choosing what you pay for your tickets, please consider that the salons and all the work at Wild Women Press is completely unfunded. We are working hard to bring this amazing experience to you. The more you can pay, the better we can value and pay the authors and organisers for all their work, wild words and wisdom.
That way, everyone comes out feeling lovely!
Want to pay it forward?
Community is at the heart of everything we do at Wild Women Press. If you want to pay a free ticket forward to someone, you can Buy Me A Coffee. Just donate as many coffees as you want and remember to tell us that these coffees are for the ‘Wild Women Salons’.
Coffees donated the Wild Women Salons will help us offer more free tickets in future events to those who need that support right now.
‘To bring oneself to others makes the whole planet less lonely […] None of us can ever know the value of our lives, or how our separate and silent scribbling may add to the amenity of the world, if only by how radically it changes us, one by one.’
(Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir)
This first event was a wonderful treat. Empowering and connecting. Thanks everyone.
Fantastic news. I’ll be supporting these events and look forward to learning and sharing. Writing creative non-fiction is my all-consuming passion so this will be fun! I heard Nicola speak about her work last year; her book is a really good read.