About Sarah

 

Reading at a recent very special event, my son’s wedding!

I’ve written six books: three novels, Something Beginning With, Tell Me Everything and Getting the Picture, a book of short stories, Leading the Dance, and two collections of poetry, You Do Not Need Another Self-Help Book and Digging Up Paradise.

I regularly teach writing courses at the University of Kent ‘s Tonbridge centres, and have a particular passion for Writing for Wellbeing, running groups in libraries, gardens, yurts and corporate offices. I am currently a Lector with the Royal Literary Fund. 

My work featured in the Independent newspaper

My writing has appeared in a number of publications, including the Virago Book of Shopping, the Poetry of Sex (Penguin Books), Rialto, Poetry London, PEN International, the Financial Times, Psychologies magazine, Mslexia, and has been commissioned by BBC Radio 4, the Wise Words Festival in Canterbury, and the Arts Council funded (Be)spoken Project. My poem, ‘Greening the Garden’, has been used in the installation for the previous two High Sheriffs for Kent, and two of my short stories have been made into films. Community projects have included turning Westgate Gardens, Canterbury, into a ‘poetry book’ and a walk (with Old Map Man, Ken Titmuss ) of the Lost Gardens of the Strand for the Chelsea Fringe.

My TEDx talk on the power of everyday words. That’s a photo of my dad behind. He was a writer too. 

 

I’m a Hawthornden Fellow, former Canterbury Laureate, and have twice been awarded international residential Fellowships from Virginia Center for Culture and Arts in the US. I was part of the tutor team for both the MA in Creative Writing and Personal Development at the University of Sussex and the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Kent. As the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science for three years, I supported students and staff with their academic writing, and ran creative writing workshops for the PhD programme there.