Anna Vaught – författare

The Alchemy is a robust, frank and loving guide to an often opaque industry. As well as offering tips on working in gentle increments and re-imagining what productivity and the work of writing look like, there is advice on sending out work and navigating the industry, looking after your mental health as you go.

Full of practical advice, strategies, comfort and the occasional entertaining essay, The Alchemy is about writing a book when you thought you could not. It is for all writers, but with a particular eye on those who are tired and lacking in confidence, and those who face significant challenges – perhaps you are chronically ill or care for a loved one. It is a book for beginners, but it is also for those of you who are stuck in your habits and practice – perhaps you just need a pal to guide you through the day to day with the book you wanted to write. That's what The Alchemy is. Let's do this together.

In the county of Wiltshire, there are thirteen white horses carved on the chalk uplands. 

In Her Winter Song we find ourselves transported to a Wiltshire long past, surrounded by a host of characters that are firmly interwoven into the tapestry of the land, their storylines cutting through time.

A beautifully written, lyrical work, Her Winter Song is a folkloric fable about white horses, shadows, possession and terrible deeds in the Wiltshire uplands that gives a firm nod to the classic ghost-story writer M.R. James, and, with the help of the gorgeous illustrations by Maya Chessman, breathes new life into winters yet to come.

The Elixir follows The Alchemy, a robust, frank and loving guide to an often opaque industry. As well as offering tips on working in gentle increments and re-imagining what productivity and the work of writing looks like, there is advice on sending out work and navigating the industry, looking after your mental health as you go.

Full of practical advice, strategies, comfort and the occasional entertaining essay, The Elixir is about writing a book when you thought you could not. It is for all writers, but with a particular eye on those who are tired and lacking in confidence, and those who face significant challenges – perhaps you are chronically ill or care for a loved one. It is a book for beginners, but it is also for those of you who are stuck in your habits and practice – perhaps you just need a pal to guide you through the day to day with the book you wanted to write. That’s what The Elixir is. Let’s do this together.

After the death of her steady, constraining husband, Catherine discovers that grief can be a liberation. With her adult children appalled by her sudden transformations, and a strangely familiar presence in the house urging her on, she begins to test the boundaries of who she might become. 

A call arrives on her newly purchased phone – a widower, Alec, still dialling the number once owned by his dead wife. What follows is a transgressive, intoxicating relationship built on longing, lies and the hunger to feel alive. 

All the Days I Did Not Live is a haunting exploration of loneliness, taboo and the dangerous, but delicious, magic of reinvention – where freedom comes at a cost and even the ghosts refuse to stay quiet…

Nature has not been my cure. It has been my inspiration, teacher and companion. I am not better, but I have never been alone.

These Envoys of Beauty is a carefully crafted compendium of essays in which Dr Anna Vaught explores her relationship with the natural world, how it feeds her imagination and has given her hope.

Growing up in a rural setting, and at times in extremis, nature was a centring power on Anna’s early years – wishing trees, talking streams – and she explores how an enduring love of foraging, a sensual consideration of how things smell, licking the rain from leaves, drinking, growing and cooking, has shaped her life.

Over the course of twelve essays, as herbs spill out and roots dig in, Anna’s relationship with the natural world becomes a lens for exploring themes of loneliness, depression and trauma, and she discusses how these great systems of healing and sustenance continue to exert their power decades later.

This diverse and varied anthology of short fiction, essays and poems includes contributions by Sam Jordison, Chantal Mouffe, Steven O’Brien, Jules Pretty, Justine Sless, Patrick Wright and poet M W Bewick as well as by writers from the current Patrician Press stable. The contributors confront our present political ‘tempestuous’ times and some of the works have a science-fiction flavour to include dystopian, authoritarian and imagined worlds.