Dear supporters 

We have a date to celebrate the launch of A Wild and Precious Life. It will be a Zoom event and we'd love you to come, so we can thank you in person for your support of our anthology. There will be readings and discussion among contributors and us, the editors.

It's on Thursday, 13th May, 6-7.30pm. If you'd like to come, please book your place on our Eventbrite page so we know…

Dear supporters,

We have our cover! We wanted to send this to you before revealing it to the world, to say thank you so much for all your support in helping us make this dream become real. 

We really hope you like the cover. We do. We think it has the right combo of wildness and freedom, with a jarring, special kind of beauty. It will certainly stand out on the shelves.

Please feel free to…

I am so excited that we have just gone through the first proofs of a Wild and Precious Life and the lovely marks made by the editors at UNBOUND. We have a publication date, too. April 2021. I am so proud and so pleased that we are now here at the stage where we can work hard to make this book beautiful. We couldn’t have done it without you. It’s going to be wonderful. Keep safe.

Warmest, Lily and…

Dear supporters

This afternoon we hit our target. We are now 100% funded, thanks to you, your support and belief in us and this book. We can't thank you enough. Perfect timing after a wonderful event last night in London.

We can now take our book through production. Those of you who have pledged for exciting things will hear from us soon. 

Until then, and thank you again.

Love, Lily and…

Just a quick note to tell you that we've chosen our lucky four mentees and have begun work with them. We had a good number of applicants from our existing community of recovery writers, and it was very difficult to choose. But, in the end, we chose those writers we felt would most benefit from the scheme. Those were Deborah Martin, who wants to work on a collection of short stories, Astra Bloom, who…

Dear supporters,

We are very excited that our ACE award has propelled us 84% towards our target. We are now so close to reaching our target, but still need to push for pledges in order to get there by the end of November, when we need to deliver the manuscript to Unbound. Please spread the word to anyone you know who'd enjoy A Wild and Precious Life and wants to support this important book. 

Dear supporters,

We will finally hold a copy of our anthology in our hands... I submitted an Arts Council application for A Wild and Precious Life Mentoring Programme, and heard last week that we were successful with our bid... This will enable us to mentor four of our writers, host three events (in London, Birmingham and Bristol) with readings and a panel discussion on the power of writing in…

Dear supporters,

Some of you might be aware that one of our authors, Michele Kirsch, has had a lot of publicity for her recent memoir on how cleaning helped her recovery from alcoholism. She has also suggested an event to help publicise A Wild and Precious Life in a Shoreditch cafe, Paper and Cup. I will let you know once we have a date.  

I have just completed an Arts Council application…

Hello to all our lovely supporters,

Please tune in to the 'Listening Project' on BBC Radio 4 this Friday night - if you're a late owl: 23.55 - or the omnibus on Sunday (2pm), to listen to me and Susanah Vernon Hunt in discussion about how important our relationship became after I taught her as one of my original students at St Mungo's, Hackney Recovery Service. This was the creative writing class…

Hello, 

We're still here and still crowdfunding - though we've hit the 50% mark, which is certainly news. It means we can start to approach patrons to ask for slightly bigger wads of cash and we are hopeful it will speed up our progress. 

Today MIR Online published a podcast, which involves an interview with me, Lily, talking about the inspiration behind the project, my views on addiction…

Dear supporters,

From the very start of this project, we came up with suggestions of who might write an introduction for us, preferably someone who had a bit of kudos, but who'd also tripped into the dark side, and understood what it was to stand at the brink and make it back again. We had a few ideas, tried a few people, but to no avail. All the time, I had Will Self at the back of my mind, and…

Last Monday Zoe and I hosted our first event for A Wild and Precious Life, our ACE-funded anthology of recovery stories, which sprung from our teaching creative writing to a group of people recovering from drug and alcohol addiction at Hackney Recovery Service (affiliated with St Mungo’s). The event took place at http://www.housmans.com/, a radical bookshop on Caledonian Road, London. In among…

Dear supporters,

Tomorrow one of our original members of the creative writing class at St Mungo's will be in conversation with me for the Listening Project, BBC Radio 4. We will be going to broadcasting house to be recorded. This is very exciting. We'll be discussing what meeting each other has meant to us both, and how writing has changed our lives. The whole conversation will be archived at the…

Dear supporters,

We've had a flurry of interest in our project recently... a number of pledges, which brings us to 30% funded. This is very exciting, as I can send off our Arts Council bid once we hit 40%. We've also had some good press. An interview with me about the power of writing in recovery, on a site concerned with alcohol awareness, https://www.alcoholconcern.org.uk/Blog/writing-your-way…

Dear Wild and Precious supporters!

Thank you so much for your belief in this project and for your support. Without you, there would be no book, so we are hugely grateful. 

We are now, as of today, 1/4 of the way there; 25% funded... Which, in approx two months, is pretty good going.

We have written our Arts Council application to ask for their support to reach our target and will send it…

Dear supporters,

To those of you who have supported our recovery project: a HUGE thank you. We have had such a great response so far and the pledges are coming in daily. We have raised 15% of our funds in the first couple of weeks, which is good going. And is only possible because of all your support.

We have a way to go yet, so please spread the word if you haven't already. It's amazing how…

A huge thank you so all of you who have pledged already for our recovery anthology. We have had such an amazing and generous response, and we are already 6% funded. It is so wonderful that you acted quickly with your pledges, as now we have a firm foundation for others to follow, and it really helps in getting an excitement drummed up around the project. I'm going to post updates on how things are…