C1 Writing workshop Andy West and Yvonne Jewkes

‘Freedom to Write’ Memoir and Life Writing

How do we write about our own lives, and the people and places that shape us?

Freedom to Write is a creative writing venture run by Yvonne Jewkes and Andy West. They host an annual residential writing retreat in Ross-on-Wye and creative writing workshops in London. This two-hour taster workshop is an opportunity to try your hand at writing the story you are uniquely placed to tell, whether that’s memoir, or the story of your professional life, or a combination of the two. Yvonne and Andy will give tuition on getting started and getting going with your writing, and will set writing prompts to inspire you. No prior experience is necessary.

Your ticket includes tea/coffee & biscuits

Andy West is author of The Life Inside: A Memoir of Prison, Family and Philosophy (Picador, 2022), an Irish Times and The i Book of 2022. Geoff Dyer described it as ‘Tense and intimate…an education’, while Sir Lenny Henry said ‘Enriching, sobering and at times heartrending. A wonder’.

Yvonne Jewkes is author of An Architecture of Hope: Reimagining the Prison, Restoring a House, Rebuilding Myself (Scribe, Sept 2024), described by Jennie Godfrey (author of The List of Suspicious Things) as a ‘deeply vulnerable, beautifully written personal memoir… a triumph’, and by Joe Moran (author of First You Write a Sentence) as a book ‘full of hard-won authority and expertise conveyed in tenderly human ways.’

Andy and Yvonne are Writers-in-Residence at HMP Grendon and founders of Freedom to Write