Why we created The Nonfiction Room
We met thirteen years ago, and have been helping each other through the writing process ever since.
We know from our experience of writing, publishing, and teaching that creating room for supportive, inquiring conversation — with someone who is curious and attentive to your project’s unique unfolding — is key to sustaining a writing life.
What we do
We mentor writers of nonfiction, at any stage of their projects.
Our sessions combine feedback and craft advice based on the material you share with us, with deeper inquiry into the beating heart of your writing. We help you understand what is at stake in the project, and identify what’s getting in your way.
We are not editors, and we don’t offer a verdict on your writing and whether it will be published. Instead, we offer clients a space to take their writing seriously through an ongoing, skilled conversation.
Our approach has been honed by decades of working with aspiring and already-published authors, as well as through our own experience as writers working with high-profile literary agents and editors.
Who we work with
Mentoring is for writers who are serious about their practice. You don’t have to be already published, but if you are coming to work with us, it is unlikely to be your first attempt at writing.
We are specialists in ideas-led writing, including
life-writing and memoir
essays
auto-theory
narrative nonfiction
cultural histories
experts communicating their ideas for wider readership
strongly argued and polemical writing
writing with strong and distinctive voices
innovative hybrid forms
We don’t get hung up on individual sub-categories of writing – prose is prose – but instead are interested in what makes a particular piece of writing unique, compelling, thought-provoking, and true to its own vision. So if you don’t quite know how to describe or categorise your work, that’s not a problem!
Why work with us?
We have a combined 40 years of experience teaching and mentoring writers at all stages of their careers. Between us, we have taught at many of the leading centers for creative writing, including Faber Academy and Arvon Foundation, as well as at universities including Birkbeck and Queen Mary, University of London.
Though we work with clients separately, we meet monthly to reflect on our ongoing mentoring practice, so whichever of us you work with, you benefit from both our expertise.