Writing Wild Issue 16 - New Stirrings
Words from the Wild Women Writers' Salons
We’re back!
Hello, wonderful wild ones - and welcome to those who have joined the Wild Women Writers’ Salons recently. June is here, and with it a new and fabulous Wild Women Writers’ Salons programme. Whoop! Whoop!
Our new programme will be a little different, bringing together amazing writers from across genres — so expect poetry, nonfiction, memoir, and novels, all with the same depth of conversation and reflection that makes the Wild Women Writers’ Salons so special. And believe me when I say — it is an absolutely fantastic programme, filled with wonderful writers, kicking off with the fantastic Dr Liz O Riordan (returning to the salons), Jean Hannah Edelstein, and Katy Bowser Hutson.
Breaking News…
This week, I found out that I have been successful in my application to Creative Scotland’s Open Fund to support my work in producing the 2025 - 26 Wild Women Writers’ Salons programme. Happy dances have been done!
The funding through their Open Fund for Individual Artists will help cover part of the project's administration and management costs and contribute towards supporting our guest authors.
The funding will also enable me to increase access to the salons by providing British Sign Language (BSL) interpretation for a limited number of salons, in addition to the usual live captioning and subtitled recordings for delayed viewing.
It also means I can continue to offer a supportive space to all the authors involved in the project through monthly meet-ups and a peer-to-peer creative community.
This is brilliant news, and I am so incredibly thankful for this support.
Alongside your support through ticket sales and subscriptions, this funding will enable us to offer you a comprehensive programme of unique, high-quality literary experiences that are accessible, intimate, and inspirational.
Thank you to Creative Scotland and to all of you who are helping to grow this community — authors, audiences, and behind-the-scenes supporters — you are all amazing, and I am truly grateful.
BRAND NEW SALON PROGRAMME 2025-2026
This salon programme will run from June 2025 to November 2026, with a break for December. Just like our first programme, the 2025-26 salons bring together a fabulous, international programme of amazing writers covering poetry, novels, non-fiction and memoir. More than your usual panel, the salons are a space that is author-focused, sharing creative conversation that goes beyond the usual literary event into something unique and very special.
Each salon is carefully and individually curated, with considerable thought given to pairing authors and 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.
ACCESSIBLILTY
The salons will still be held online, via Zoom, on the last Thursday of each month. These sessions are typically held from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. UK time, with some sessions scheduled from 1:00 to 2:30 p.m. UK time to accommodate authors with other commitments or specific needs.
We prioritise comfort and self-care during the salons — and all the rest of the time too!
The salons are offered as Pay-What-You-Can. This is to create an equitable space where everyone can participate. However, it might be helpful when deciding what to donate to have the following price points as guides.
A ticket donation of £8, £16, and £24 is offered as suggestions — these are realistic estimates of the cost to support the project and acknowledge the time, creativity, and energy generously given by our guest authors and all those involved in making the salons happen. No profit is made on the salons — everything generated from ticket sales and subscriptions is reinvested in the project to support its continuation.
Whilst I invite you to give what you can in line with these suggestions, please do not feel you cannot attend if you cannot meet these price points. As a disabled, low-income parent-carer, I am very aware that there are times in life when we can’t find those funds, no matter how much we want to. You are still very much welcome. All and any donations and paid subscriptions are vital to this space's ecosystem, and as always, we are grateful for your support.
So let’s get the conversation started…
Salon 15 - This Tender Territory
Writing the Body: Illness, Advocacy, and the Creative Act
Thursday 26th June 2025 — online — 7 - 8.30 pm
In this special salon, three writers come together to explore the tender, radical, and often complicated act of writing through illness. Each of these authors has faced breast cancer, and each has chosen to write from it, through it, and beyond it. Together, we will explore the following (and more)…
What does it mean to write from the body when the body is in crisis
How storytelling can transform private experience into collective empathy
The challenges and responsibilities of advocacy through art
Finding voice in vulnerability, and community in visibility
The tensions between survival, creativity, and public expectation
Join us for readings, reflection, conversation and a chance to ask your own questions.
Who It's For:
Writers, readers, caregivers, survivors, medical professionals, and anyone interested in the intersection of creativity, illness, and resilience.
Introducing our Salon Guests
Jean Hannah Edelstein
Jean Hannah Edelstein is a British-American writer. Her memoir, This Really Isn't About You, was published by Picador in 2018. Her journalism has been published in numerous UK and US outlets, including the Guardian, Elle and New York Magazine, and she's contributed to radio programmes including This American Life. She lives with her family in Montclair, New Jersey.
Breasts: A Relatively Brief Relationship
In this short, striking memoir, Jean Hannah Edelstein charts the course of her unexpectedly brief relationship with breasts.
As she comes of age, she learns that breasts are a source of both shame and power. In early motherhood, she sees her breasts transform into a source of sustenance and a locus of pain. And then, all too soon, she is faced with a diagnosis and forced to confront what it means to lose and rebuild an essential part of yourself.
Funny and moving, elegant and furious and full of heart, Breasts is an original and indispensable read. It is both an intimate account of one woman's relationship with her own body and a universally relatable story for anyone who has ever had - or lost - breasts.
‘a thunderclap of a memoir … stunning, lyrical and funny and absolutely smarting with truth’ Marianne Levy, author of Don’t Forget to Scream
Dr Liz O’Riordan
Dr Liz O’Riordan was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer whilst working as a consultant breast surgeon in 2015, aged just 40. Her first book, ‘The Complete Guide to Breast Cancer: How to Feel Empowered and Take Control’, was her way of helping women when a local recurrence forced her to retire. Her best-selling memoir, ‘Under The Knife’, shares her experiences of life as a female surgeon before becoming a patient herself. She is one of the top 100 Female Key Opinion Leaders in Oncology to follow on social media, and she hosts the podcast ‘So Now I’ve Got Breast Cancer’. She continues to help patients with evidence-based videos that explain and demystify cancer treatment, and she discusses globally how to improve cancer care.
The Cancer Roadmap: real science to guide your treatment path
What is cancer? What causes it, and why do some people get it while others don’t?And with so much conflicting information now available, who can we really trust for sensible medical advice anyway?
We all want certainty and hope for ourselves or those we love after a cancer diagnosis, but what we really need is honesty and truth. In The Cancer Roadmap, breast cancer surgeon and three-time cancer patient Dr Liz O’Riordan confronts the big cancer truths (and myths), offering clear, evidence-based answers. She breaks down the latest research to give the facts you need to make informed treatment decisions that are right for you or your loved one, along with suggestions for meaningful, practical steps to reduce the risk of future recurrence, even when the odds feel stacked against you.
‘Absolutely essential for anyone living with cancer’ — Lorraine Kelly
Katy Bowser Hutson
Katy Bowser Hutson is a writer and songwriter. She is the author of Now I Lay Me Down to Fight, Little Prayers for Ordinary Days and is currently writing about play and the playfulness of God.
Now I Lay Me Down To Fight
Through poetry and essays, Katy Bowser Hutson chronicles her battle with breast cancer and the complications of faith amid such a fight, leading us through the realisation of cancer, the experience of chemotherapy and a mastectomy, relentless rounds of radiation, the uncertainty of ongoing treatment, and what comes after survival. She writes in resistance to sickness, of wrestling toward beauty. Through it all, she shows what it means to struggle in a battered body and to pray to a God who is near to the broken.
‘a luminous and lyrical mix of poetry and prose ... This gemlike offering captures illness in all its pain and complexity’ (Publishers’ Weekly)
Introducing our Salon Host — Victoria Bennett
Victoria Bennett is a disabled writer, carer, and mother. A firm believer in everyone’s right to write their own story, she has dedicated much of her working life to nurturing spaces where people can do just that, founding Wild Women Press in 1999. When not juggling writing, care, and managing her chronic illness, she can be found tending her new apothecary garden in Orkney, where the wild things grow.
Her debut memoir, All My Wild Mothers: Motherhood, Loss, and an Apothecary Garden, is an intimate memoir of grief, growing, and what it means to care for ourselves, for each other, and the Earth. A testament to the love and radical hope that can grow in the broken places, it offers a quietly positive manifesto for a changing world. Nautilus Book Award Winner 2024.
‘An impossibly moving memoir of gardens, herbalism, and the rigours and rewards of care... It heralds the arrival of an exciting new voice in nature writing’ (Cal Flyn)
Her most recent poetry collection, To Start the Year at Its Quiet Centre, follows her experience of terminal care through cancer, and the death of her mother to mesothelioma.
Her forthcoming book, The Apothecary By The Sea: A Year in an Orkney Garden, is due out in May 2026.
Last chance to catch the Wild Women Writers’ Salons 2023-24
Don’t miss this chance to catch up on all the wonderful, wild words you might have missed. All salons' links can be found in Issues 14 and 15 of Writing Wild.
The 2023-24 links will be archived on June 24th, so do take the opportunity to catch them before this happens.
For those who haven’t upgraded to a paid subscription yet, please consider it for the forthcoming programme. Paid subscriptions are vital to supporting the behind-the-scenes work of bringing the salons to everyone. Paid subscription also gives you access to extra author interviews, writing prompts, reading recommendations, writing opportunities, and monthly access to salon recordings.
Want to read the books?
The salons are carefully curated to bring authors together to discuss their work, exploring connections and 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?
What are the Wild Women Writers’ Salons?
With a treasure chest of excellent writers from across the globe, these are different from your regular Zoom sessions or author events. We're creating a welcoming and inspiring space to gather, engage and inspire positive change.
Each salon features three (and sometimes four!) fantastic guest writers in intimate and meaningful conversation about what matters, exploring all aspects of the writing life.
Here’s a sneak peek of what you can expect:
Dive deep into the world of words.
Hear authors share 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.
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;
listed 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 taking out a paid subscription, you support the work behind the scenes to make this project possible. Thank you.
Self-Care Snippet
‘You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.’
― Maya Angelou
This is such exciting news!
It's good to know that you have a new series of Salons programmed, and that your book will be out next year!