About Writers’ HQ
Writers’ HQ runs affordable creative writing courses, retreats and workshops for kickass writers who just want to get the fuck on with it.
We’ve been helping writers love their writing and finish their stories since 2012.
We’re here for any writer who feels like they don’t fit in other literary spaces, and who needs time, space and friends to help develop their writing.
We might be kinda accidentally big now, but we’re still a rag-tag band of scruffy nerf herders and a secret cult hellbent on dismantling the capitalist patriarchal hegemony, and our mission is the same as ever: to change the world for the better by telling the stories that matter.
Who is Writers’ HQ?
Writers’ HQ is run by Sarah Lewis and a team of badass hand-baked writers who believe that all stories – your stories – deserve to be told.
What started life as a handful of scruffy, sweary writers desperately trying to make time and space to write has grown into the most word-slinging, tea-drinking, story-writing, biscuit-dunking, procrastination-busting, support-giving writing community around, with thousands of writers getting their words onto paper and into the world.
Sarah Lewis is a writer of words – journalistic (award-winning), creative non-fiction (self-indulgent), fiction (do scholarships and grants count as award-winning?) and newsletters (her first love and a much under appreciated art form).
She has a creative writing MA from the University of East Anglia where she won the David Higham Award. She has been mentored by critically acclaimed authors including Leone Ross and Peter Hobbs. She was one of the NWS10 talented early career writers and gained a rarely given special mention in the BBC Short Story Award.
Sarah launched the original Brighton Writers’ Retreat in 2012 in order to escape her family and spend time writing. Through the incredible community that formed around those events she discovered a deep love of creating courses and workshops that light a fire under the procrastinating arses of renegade writers, leading to the birth of Writers’ HQ.
Sarah is a pathological malcontent and despite writing endlessly is never satisfied. She loves spreadsheets, being right, and sticking it to the man. Oh and also stories. She really, really likes stories.
The team!
Round of applause for our amazing crew of retreat reps, webinar hosts, workshop facilitators and all round super beings! This lovely lot deliver your weekly retreats, online sessions and open mic nights, and help make our community the very best place on the internet with their generosity and support.
Tabitha Bast
Tabitha lives in Bradford and works as a therapist and writer. Her work is inspired by nature, revolutionary struggles and love. She is currently working on a tightly themed, dystopian short story collection, “Tipping Point” and her writing ranges from political articles to creative non-fiction and short stories.
Anika Carpenter
Anika Carpenter lives and works in Brighton, UK. Her flash fiction can be found online in various publications, including – Ellipsis Zine, Janus Literary, The Molotov Cocktail and Reflex Fiction. Her work has been shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Prize and the Bridport Prize. You can find her via her website here.
Kathy Hoyle
Kathy runs our Coventry retreats and also hosts online Weekend Retreats, Mini Retreats and Flash Face Off. She holds a BA (hons) and an MA in Creative Writing, is studying for her PhD, and has a passion for Flash Fiction, Short Stories and jammy dodgers all of which fuel her soul equally. She says she will write a novel one day but nobody believes her.
Aakriti Kaushik
Aakriti runs the Birmingham Retreat. She is a PR professional and ex-journalist, writing about STEM, engineering and electronics, and gender and women issues. She is currently working on her first fiction novel. Aakriti is also an accredited mindfulness meditation teacher, and a strong advocate of yoga.
Mara Livermore
Veronique Kootstra
Veronique runs the Edinburgh retreats and also hosts online Weekend Retreats, Journaling and 60-min Novelling. She writes short stories, flash fiction and has recently finished her first novel. When she’s not writing you can usually find her in the cinema or on social media.
Paul Macauley
Paul has been making things since he was small. All the way from tiny Batman costumes made of bin-bags to becoming an award winning writer and theatre maker. As a writer and maker he is working on a novel (who isn’t, right? Keep going everyone!) and a short film and a novella and a theatre show and… you get the picture. Seeing others realising their creative ambitions inspires him, so he also works as a creative coach.
Melissa Stirling Reid
Melissa runs our Glasgow retreats, along with many of our online workshops from Journaling, to Flash Face Off, to the Mini and Weekend Retreats. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Strathclyde University, a fondness for stories featuring sandwiches, and she writes fiction and creative nonfiction.
