Writer's Lives, with Anna Wharton
If you're not familiar with Anna's Substack, you should be. It's filled with interesting feminist and topical debate and is a wonderful community.
Here at London Lit Lab we decided to ask some writers about their projects and their writing life, as a way of helping promote established and emerging writers. We’ll be running this as a series and hope to get writers from all different genres and forms, whether poetry, fiction, nonfiction or a mishmash of the above. If you have a recent book or publication to promote - or just simply want to tell us about what you are writing and reading, we’d really love to hear from you. This week we spoke to bestselling ghost writer, journalist, novelist… and memoirist,
who is currently writing her first memoir, due to be published in 2027. On her Substack, Anna does a monthly creative writing meet-up and is launching her Feminist Essay Club this Sunday.We are running some brilliant courses in the autumn, from folk tales to memoir, and monthly workshops for those of you who need peer to peer support writing your books. Scroll down to the bottom of this newsletter to find out more.
What are you currently working on?
I’m currently in the middle of writing a book about female madness. Whenever I say that I feel I need to put a question mark over it because it centres around the story of my grandmother who was incarcerated in an asylum in the 1950s and I explore her story via writers who were also in asylums around that time and came out and wrote semi-autobiographical novels about their experiences. Through their writing (and other female artists) I piece together what happened to my grandmother, but the story and history of whether women are mad is not a simple one.
What is your favourite form or genre to write and why?
I have written both fiction and non-fiction, but I feel most at home with narrative non-fiction memoir. Previously I have ghosted ten memoirs for other people, some of them including my work with Wendy Mitchell (Somebody I Used to Know, What I Wish People Knew About Dementia, One Last Thing), have been Sunday Times Bestsellers, but this book I’m currently writing is my first memoir/narrative non-fiction of my own. I think I just prefer the solidity of non-fiction, a way to be as creative as you wish but also a lifebuoy in the storm, something to hang onto, some lines within which to write. But having said that, I also have another novel on the go and always an idea for a third, especially when I should be writing something else entirely which is always when our ideas seem most attractive!
What are you currently reading?
Lots and lots of books about female madness! I’m trying to think of the last book I read which was not for work… I’ve just finished reading Jenni Fagan’s memoir, Ootlin, which was harrowing and yet utterly brilliant. And before that I read The Names by Florence Knapp which is this summer’s big read according to those in the know so I was very curious to read it. I also know Florence and so have been excited to see her debut novel published and I do believe my cats, Derek and Clive, get a mention though I’m yet to confirm with her that they were the inspiration for the namecheck — seems a coincidence though, no?
What is the best book you have read this past year and why?
Oh blimey, this is a hard question, especially as things tend to go straight out of my brain almost immediately. I have spent much of this year reading old books from the fifties and sixties for research for my book and some of them are brilliant and mostly unknown, Joanne Greenberg writes searingly about psychosis in I Never Promised You A Rose Garden, Antonia White writes some of the best dialogue I have ever read in Beyond The Glass, and Janet Frame, another writer I am studying is having a bit of resurgence at the moment via Fitzcarraldo Editions. Speaking of which, I’ve just read a new release from them, Annie Ernaux’s The Possession, which is brilliant, as always.
Where do you most like to write and why?
Ok, don’t tell anyone but in bed. And for this reason I do pilates two or three times a week and walk my dog five or six miles a day to look after my back.
When do you find it impossible to write and why?
When I have a lovely long deadline stretched out in front of me! I’m not a plodder and I’ve had to slowly accept this about myself. My process makes my other writer friends panic, but I have to run down the clock until I have a fire under me and then I write like the wind and for me, it feels as if it comes out without ego and much fluidity that way,
If you could share three golden nuggets of writing advice, what would they be?
Ask yourself would you feel happy to die before having written that burning idea you have? If not, write it. You will always regret the things you didn’t do.
Don’t keep going back, look forwards, keep getting the words down, once something is in existence in the world, you can fanny around with it then.
And finally, look after your back.
What was the best moment of your writing life?
I have been lucky to have had some wonderful moments, some six figure deals on both sides of the Atlantic, agents scrapping over me, translation deals (aka free money), Sunday Times bestsellers, optioned for TV, brilliant reviews in the newspapers, but the thing I always come back to is being longlisted for The Orwell Prize for a book I wrote called CUT: One Woman’s Fight Against FGM in Britain Today by Hibo Wardere. We also got to take part in a live reading of 1984 as a result.
What was the worst moment of your writing life?
Oh dear, I’m not sure, but I’m going to say publication day of my novel, The Imposter. It was a covid publication book and so I could not celebrate it and had no-one to celebrate it with me. Plus I had a bad back (see previous answers).
Is writing essential to you? If yes, please tell us why
Yes, it helps me make sense of the world.
Anna has been a print and broadcast journalist for thirty years. She was formally an Executive Editor at the Daily Mail and has written columns for all of the leading newspapers and magazines including The Times, The Sunday Times, The Observer and The Daily Telegraph.
Anna is most well known for her collaborations with Wendy Mitchell. She conceived the idea for each of her three books, Somebody I Used To Know, What I Wish People Knew About Dementia and most recently, One Last Thing – How To Live With The End in Mind. These books have helped to transform conversations on the disease the world over, they have helped to challenge attitudes and stereotypes.
Anna’s original blend of emotional detail coupled with topical, incisive polemical essays help to weave together stories that need to be heard and it has seen her discover authors and create books that have become Sunday Times bestsellers and critically acclaimed the world over.
Her work to highlight and expose the practice of female genital mutilation, CUT: One Woman’s Fight Against FGM in Britain Today by Hibo Wardere earned her an Orwell Prize nomination – Britain’s biggest political writing prize. She has ghostwritten nine non-fiction books, including Those Who Can, Teach by Andria Zafirakou, Breaking the Silence by Jo Milne and Brave by Adele Bellis and The Good Cop by Nusrit Mehtab.
Anna is the author of one novel, The Imposter, and is currently writing a narrative non-fiction memoir about women and madness which will be published by Hutchinson Heinemann in Spring 2027.
We have a number of new courses coming up that are available for booking:
Zoe Gilbert will be teaching Wild Inside: More Folk Tales in Fiction, 17th September to 4th November. Filled with fantastic folk tales, reading, writing, and discussion prompts.
Writing the Self Intermediate Programme with Katie Watson, starts 24th September and runs on Wednesday evenings until 15th October. To take part in this course you must have completed the foundation programme. This is for writers interested in writing for wellbeing.
If you’re interested in writing personal narrative,
Dr Lily Dunn is teaching her Creative Nonfiction: Compelling Memoir course starting 14th October (till 9th December). Perfect for beginners to intermediate.
For those of you who want to be taught by an excellent trauma-informed teacher, Katie Watson is running a Writing Your Way Back 2.5 hour masterclass on 25th October. Book here:
Enchantment in Fiction is back and running from 11th November for twelve weeks (with a break for Christmas), run by Zoe Gilbert. Get stuck in with all things enchantment in fiction, whether poetic, or lyrical, gothic, baroque, folkloric…
And Zoe Gilbert will also be running her Saltwater Folk Tales course starting on 12th November, and running for five weeks.
Both Lily and Zoe are also running their monthly Writers’ Workshops again, starting in November. Zoe’s runs on Monday evenings, and Lily’s on Thursday Perfect if you have a WIP manuscript that you want peer to peer support with.
After a great success this year,
Dr Lily Dunn is running her intermediate Memoir Bootcamp: Get Submission Ready course again in the new year, starting in February. This course is application only. Please get in touch if you want to apply.
There are reduced price places on some of these courses - please see the course listings. And please get in touch if you want to pay in instalments.
I love being a member of both Anna's White Ink community and yours at The London Lit Lab. You've run some amazing courses and I've attending some of the shorter ones on pitching and nature writing. I'd love to be interviewed if you'll have me - published later in life at 61, but with plenty more books in the tank. I write here from RIPE 🍑 - unapologetic ageing, trauma badassery, gardening as witchcraft, van life joyrides and more.
I agree with Sue and love being part of Anna's 'White Ink', Lily's 'And a Dog' and here too in the 'Writing Laboratory' - Each one gives so much, and the courses are incredible! It's a joy to be in Anna's Summer Bootcamp, and to be writing the start of my memoir as we move through it, while Anna is writing too. I'm resisting (almost) adding more books to my TBR but I want all the books Anna mentions here, plus Anna's book when it's published.