Wild Writing 25
Taking a line for a walk
Hello, wonderful wild ones - and welcome to those who have joined the Wild Women Writers’ Salons recently.
Thank you to everyone who joined Wild Women Writers Salon 23: Tracing Footsteps: on walking as a way to writing, remembering, and returning to ourselves.
Due to unforeseen circumstances, we were unable to have Debbie North join us and were also unable to provide BSL for this event. However, I highly recommend Debbie’s book Access Adventure: The UK’s best trails and outdoor activities by wheelchair and on foot, which explores how walking and wild spaces can become more inclusive, opening new ways to move through and connect with the world.
It was a really interesting conversation (as always) in which we travelled long distances witout leaving our rooms, explored what it means to walk and write, and how walking shapes our relationship with ourselves, each other, and the world around us…and of course, lots more (it wouldn’t be a Wild Women Writers’ Salon if we didn’t take some wonderful detours and meanderings would it!)
What a wonderfully wild and thoughtful conversation.A huge thank you also to my guest authors, Kerri Andrews (Pathfinding), Ursula Martin (One Woman Walks Europe), and Linda Cracknell (Sea Marked), and to all of you for bringing your words and your wild to the salon and holding the space so gently. The salons are always shaped as much by those who share them as by those speaking. You are what makes the salon a community of change.
And thank you too for raising a glass to the launch of my new book, The Apothecary by the Sea, which had its book birth day on the same day!
Whether you joined us live or are watching later, we are grateful for your presence.
With gratitude,
Victoria
Coming up this month …
In May, we will be delving into what it means to be wonderfully other, exploring disability, visibility, and the right to a rich and radiant life. So excited about this one! Full details of the salon below.
Missed the salon?
If you missed it, don’t forget that if you upgrade to a paid subscription, you can access the recording below in this newsletter (and all recordings for the season as we go forward) — as well as extra author interviews, book recommendations and writing prompts! Plus, you will be helping support the behind-the-scenes work that makes the salons happen.
Wild Women Writers’ Salons is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Signposts
Here are a few signposts from Kerri Andrews, Ursula Martin, and Linda Cracknell - for those who want to dive deeper…
From Linda:
https://www.lindacracknell.com
https://www.facebook.com/LindaCracknellWriter
https://saraband.net/contributor/linda-cracknell/
https://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/news/author/lindacracknell/
https://saraband.net/2025/09/01/the-adventure-of-writing-sea-marked-guest-post-by-linda-cracknell/
https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2023/11/writing-landscape-by-linda-cracknell/
From Kerri
From Ursula
MAY SALON
Thursday, 28th May 2026 — 7- 8.30 pm UK time
Wonderfully Other: on disability, visibility, and the right to a rich and radiant life
What does it mean to live a full, vivid, expansive life in a world that so often asks disabled people to shrink, adapt, or disappear?
In this salon, we gather around the idea of being wonderfully other, not as something to overcome, but as something to honour, explore, and claim.
Hosted by Victoria Bennett, this conversation brings together three extraordinary writers whose work reshapes how we understand disability, visibility, care, and the body:
Grace Quantock, author of Living Well with Chronic Illness, whose work offers a compassionate, practical, and deeply human roadmap for navigating long-term illness with agency and self-trust.
Rachel Charlton-Dailey, author of Ramping Up Rights, who writes powerfully on disability justice, systemic inequality, and the unfinished work of access and equity.
Sophie Strand, author of The Body Is a Doorway, whose lyrical, philosophical work explores illness, ecology, and the body as a site of transformation and connection.
Polly Atkin, author of Some of Us Just Fall and several poetry collections, including her latest, Emergency Dream, exploring chronic illness, landscape, and belonging.
Together, we will be exploring:
Visibility and invisibility, and the politics of being seen
The tension between survival and flourishing
Disability as identity, experience, and culture
The right to joy, pleasure, creativity, and a life that is not defined by limitation…
…and more!
This is not a conversation about overcoming. It is a conversation about living fully, richly, and on one’s own terms.
As always, the salon is an intimate, thoughtful space, with time for audience reflection and questions.
So let’s get the conversation started…
Access Notes
100% Online
We prioritise comfort and self-care during the salons — and all the rest of the time too!
Recorded for delayed viewing with subtitles
Captions will be available during this event
All ticket holders receive a link to the recording after the event (within 7 - 10 days)
We believe accessibility should be built into every event, not added as an afterthought. In light of this, we endeavour to make our events BSL-supported as standard. At this time, thanks to funding from Creative Scotland, we can do this for a selection of our events in the current programme. This will be marked on the individual event if available.
About the authors:
The Wild Women Writers’ Salons are carefully curated to bring together writers whose words resonate with one another, creating a space for meaningful, creative conversation among authors, readers, and all those interested in living life a little more wildly. In Salon 24, I will be joined by:
Grace Quantock
Author of Living Well With Chronic Illness
Grace Quantock
Grace Quantock is a writer, artist, and internationally recognised disability advocate whose work centres on chronic illness, trauma recovery, and the creation of sustainable, self-honouring ways of living. Drawing on her own experience of complex, long-term illness, she has developed a widely respected body of work that reframes wellbeing beyond conventional, productivity-driven models.
She is the author of Living Well with Chronic Illness, a compassionate and practical guide that offers readers tools for navigating fluctuating health, boundaries, and self-trust in a world that often misunderstands chronic conditions. Alongside her writing, Grace is the founder of the Self Care Sanctuary, an online space supporting people in cultivating restorative, accessible approaches to care.
Her work sits at the intersection of lived experience and advocacy, challenging harmful narratives around illness while offering grounded, realistic pathways toward a life shaped by agency, dignity, and deep care.
Buy Living Well with Chronic Illness
Rachel Charlton-Dailey
Author of Ramping Up Rights
Rachel Charlton-Dailey is a journalist, editor, and award-winning disability rights activist whose work focuses on the systemic inequalities shaping disabled lives in the UK and beyond. She is the founder of The Unwritten, a platform dedicated to amplifying disabled voices, and has written extensively on disability, politics, identity, and representation.
Her book Ramping Up Rights: The Unfinished Business of Disability Activism is a powerful and urgent exploration of disability justice, examining the gaps between legislation and lived reality, and the ongoing fight for access, equity, and recognition. Through her work, Rachel interrogates the structures that continue to exclude disabled people, while also highlighting the strength, resilience, and activism within disabled communities.
Known for her clarity, honesty, and refusal to soften difficult truths, Rachel’s writing and advocacy push for meaningful, systemic change, challenging both institutions and cultural attitudes around disability.
Sophie Strand
Author of My Body is a Doorway
Sophie Strand is a writer and poet whose work weaves together memoir, mythology, ecology, and philosophy to reimagine the body not as separate from the natural world, but as deeply entangled within it. Living with chronic illness, her writing explores the body as a site of transformation, vulnerability, and unexpected connection.
She is the author of The Body Is a Doorway, a lyrical and genre-defying memoir that traces her experience of illness alongside a wider inquiry into Western ideas of the body, control, and separation from nature. Her work challenges dominant narratives of health and healing, instead offering a vision of embodiment that embraces interdependence, permeability, and change.
Blending personal narrative with cultural and ecological critique, Sophie’s writing invites readers to reconsider what it means to inhabit a body, and to imagine new, more expansive ways of living within and alongside the living world.
Polly Atkin
Author of Emergency Dream
Polly Atkin is a poet and nature writer whose work is deeply rooted in landscape, embodiment, and the lived experience of chronic illness. Based in the English Lake District, her writing explores the shifting relationship between body and place, asking how we come to belong, both within ourselves and within the environments we inhabit.
She is the author of the memoir Some of Us Just Fall, which traces her experience of illness alongside a wider reflection on diagnosis, identity, and the language available to speak about the body. Her poetry collections include Basic Nest Architecture, Much With Body, and her latest collection, Emergency Dream, which continues her exploration of illness, perception, and the porous boundaries between inner and outer worlds.
Alongside her writing, Polly is co-owner of Sam Read Bookseller in Grasmere, where she is part of a long-standing literary tradition in the Lake District, supporting readers, writers, and the ongoing life of books within the community.
Introducing our Salon Host — Victoria Bennett
That is me! Founder of Wild Women Press and curator of the Wild Women Writers’ Salons. Host
I am an award-winning disabled writer, carer, and mother. A firm believer in everyone’s right to write their own story, I have dedicated much of my working life to nurturing spaces where people can do just that, founding Wild Women Press in 1999. I have curated and hosted the Wild Women Writers’ Salons since 2023, bringing together writers and readers from around the world to explore connection, care, and the wild edges of experience.
My latest book, The Apothecary By The Sea: A Year in an Orkney Garden, was released on 30th April by Elliot and Thompson.
‘… an enchanting and enriching mix of memoir, ecology and magic, and a heartfelt antidote to a fast-changing and often troubling world …’ - Annie Worsley, author of Windswept
‘… a gift for times of transition, it is a companion for those navigating thresholds in life, when old maps no longer serve and new ways of being are quietly forming …’ - JC Niala, author of This New Eden
My debut memoir, All My Wild Mothers: Motherhood, Loss, and an Apothecary Garden, was a 2024 Nautilus Book Award Winner (memoir)
‘… a beautiful, raw, meditative book on grief, mothering, and the wild both within and without… ’ (Kerri ni Dochartaigh)
‘… a haven in a cynical world — exactly the kind of book we need right now …’ (Catherine Simpson)
WHAT ARE THE WILD WOMEN WRITERS’ SALONS?
Each salon is carefully curated, with considerable thought given to pairing authors with their writing. This pairing allows us to bring something new to the conversation — a space where all the books intersect and begin to tell an additional story. All participants, including myself, read and responded to the selected books, engaging with them as readers, writers, and creative peers.
This is more than a literary panel — it’s a community. We’re creating a welcoming and inspiring space to gather, engage and inspire positive change. In this collaborative, creative space, the audience and authors come together to delve deeper into the words and what it means to write them.
How do the salons work? What is Pay What You Can?
I am a disabled author and carer, as well as the founder of Wild Women Press and the Wild Women Writers’ Salons. I am passionate about creating positive change, and I believe words can help us do this.
That is why I share mine, and why I have dedicated over half my life to creating spaces where others can share theirs. When we tell our stories and listen to others, we connect. In this ever-divisive world, it feels so important to do.
I run the salons from my home. This is not an organisation or a business, but it does need an income to survive, as do I.
No personal profit is made from the salons — all revenue generated from ticket sales and subscriptions is reinvested in the project to support the authors, those working behind the scenes, and to make the project possible in the future.
This year, I have been fortunate to receive a small grant from Creative Scotland for research and development, which will help me expand access and support the authors’ time and commitment, as well as my own.
However, it doesn’t cover the full cost of the programme, or the hours it takes to make it happen. That is where your support comes in.
The salons are offered as Pay-What-You-Can. As a disabled carer and a member of a low-income household, I know the reality of economic access. I am very aware that there are times in life when we can’t find those funds, no matter how much we want to. Please know that whatever you can pay is gratefully received and you are welcome.
If you can pay more, then having suggested price points as guides may be helpful.
A minimum ticket donation of £5 is suggested. This won’t cover the salon or the work, but it goes some way.
£8, £16, and £24 are realistic price points acknowledging the time, creativity, and energy generously given by our guest authors and all those involved in making the salons happen.
BUT please do not feel you cannot attend if you cannot meet these price points. If this is you right now, please know that you are still very much welcome.
All and any donations and paid subscriptions are vital to this space’s ecosystem
So let’s get the conversation started…
Want to read the books?
The salons are carefully curated to bring authors together to discuss their work, explore connections, and engage in creative practice. All the books can be read as stand-alone, but something magical happens when you read them together and carry on that conversation between the works.
Did you know that you can find all the authors’ books and recommended reads on our Bookshop page, or you can buy the author’s books directly (deliverable worldwide) from Sam Read Booksellers?
Why Upgrade to Paid?
Be part of the growing Wild Women Writers’ community
The salons are entirely unfunded. All paid subscriptions support the work behind the scenes to make the Wild Women Writers’ Salons and the newsletter happen. In exchange for your support, you get:
access to all previous newsletters
access to recordings of the full programme of salons;
additional interviews with our guest authors on their writing and inspirations;
additional reading recommendations from our guest authors;
bespoke writing prompts from our guest authors;
occasional additional writing opportunities and courses;
The chance to be part of a nurturing community of creative practice!
Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription today.
Writing Wild (Wild Women Writers’ Salons) is a reader-supported publication. By subscribing, you support the behind-the-scenes work that makes this project possible. Thank you.
Reminder to Book
Tickets for Salon 24 are on sale now — so make sure to book yourself on and treat yourself to a wonderfully wild experience.
Until then, go gently, keep connecting, and stay wild!
Victoria x
Self-Care Snippet
‘…Be wild; that is how to clear the river. The river does not flow in polluted, we manage that. The river does not dry up, we block it. If we want to allow it its freedom, we have to allow our ideational lives to be let loose, to stream, letting anything come, initially censoring nothing. That is a creative life…’ — Clarissa Pinkola Estes
