“In Tanya’s words one can feel the sense of personal ownership and self-sufficiency…Nobody rules you, nothing has ruined you, you are gleefully, determinedly, yourself.” Jenny Landreth writing in Swell (Bloomsbury, 2017)
“Tanya creates intriguing space in public places where the curious find themselves engaging in a writer’s practice and volunteering their own stories to be woven into her work.” David Nash RA
Tanya Shadrick is founder of The Selkie Press and editor of Wild Woman Swimming by Lynne Roper – a journal of west country waters longlisted for the 2019 Wainwright Prize. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, she is also a sought-after artist in residence who encourages connection and creativity in those who encounter her.
In 2016 Tanya embarked on her Wild Patience Scrolls – a mile of writing composed outdoors, pen on paper, undertaken beside the country’s oldest lido and completed by Lake Geneva as guest of the European publisher Vera Michalski Hoffmann at The Jan Michalski Foundation for Writing and Literature. It asked the hundreds who came close: When did you feel most wild and free?
She has since worked with the public in many other extraordinary locations, including Virginia Woolf’s garden on the Sussex Downs, a listed National Trust cabin on a cliffside by the wild west country sea, and Boldshaves Garden as writer-in-residence at the 2019 Wealden Literary Festival.
A regular contributor to Oh Comely, her writing has also appeared in The Guardian, Rakes Progress and The Simple Things. With Fi Glover, she co-presented the three-hour Radio 4 Extra special People Talking, and was featured alongside her mentor the sculptor David Nash in the 2018 BBC Radio 4 show Pursuit of Beauty: Slow Art.
During 2020, she is working on her first book The Cure for Sleep: a fable-like story of a life transformed slowly after sudden near death.
“Profound. Liberating. Empowering…Tanya’s teaching feels like an incredibly constructive discussion, engaging not only the learner’s mind but also body and whole way of being in the world. The weeks spent in her company have had a profound, long-lasting impact.” Student (New Writing South, 2018)
