“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
“Moving, subtle, lucid…” Robert Macfarlane
As a writer and former hospice lifestory scribe, I work in public spaces to encourage and embolden others to share stories and take their own creative risks – a practice which has earned me Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts. (See Impact section for comments on how my work has affected those who encounter it).
My Wild Patience mile of writing – begun on residency beside Pells Pool in Sussex and completed by Lake Geneva as a resident at The Jan Michalski Foundation for Writing and Literature – asked those who came close: When did you feel most wild and free? In body? Your mind?
The Wild Patience Scrolls were most recently featured alongside David Nash’s Ash Dome and James Turrell’s Roden Crater in the BBC Radio 4 show Pursuit of Beauty: Slow Art. An Outdoor Swimming Society feature on the work gives a sense of the depths it sounded in the lives of others.
Wild Woman Swimming: A Journal of West Country Waters is my edited collection of the visionary wild swimmer Lynne Roper’s diaries. You can order direct from The Selkie Press or from any online bookseller or local bookstore. Jenny Landreth, who included Lynne in her prize-winning Swell: A Waterbiography, gave a moving review of Wild Woman Swimming on Caught by the River, calling it ‘a tangible book…as alive as weather.’
Watermarks: Writing by Lido Lovers & Wild Swimmers (Frogmore Press) is the Outdoor Swimming Society recommended read I created alongside my Pells residency, with co-editor Rachel Playforth and over 50 fine poets and prose writers. It is currently on its 5th print run: an experiment in mixing established writers with local and unpublished voices that is still finding new readers.
Recent writing and presenting credits include: The Guardian, Radio 4 Extra, Oh Comely Magazine, The Simple Things, and Rakes Progress.
For latest news on these and my other writing and speaking events, you are welcome to follow me on Twitter @lidowriters.
Please send project or press enquiries to: tanya@tanyashadrick.com
“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.” Swell, Jenny Landreth (Bloomsbury, 2017)
