Join me for a special episode digging deep into the Women's Prize Discoveries 2025, a prize and program for unpublished women fiction writers in the UK and Ireland, with two of this years judges Dreda Say Mitchell, an award winning and bestselling crime and mystery author and Chloe Timms, journalist, author and podcast host. We are joined by the winner of the inaugural Discoveries Prize 2021, Emma van Straaten, whose debut novel This Immaculate Body will be published in February. This episode is packed full of advice and will get you itching to pull out your Work in Progress and enter the prize.

Links

Women's Prize Discoveries 2025

Girl, Missing - Dreda Say Mitchell

The Seawomen - Chloe Timms

This Immaculate Body - Emma van Straaten

Dreda Say Mitchell - dredamitchell.com

Chloe Timms - chloetimms.co.uk

Confessions of A Debut Novelist with Chloe Timms

Emma van Straaten on Instagram @evswrites

Book Proposal Group Program - pennywincerwrites.com/bookproposalgroup

Not Too Busy To Write on Substack

Lucy Gough has come to writing via her career as a stylist and art director. From working in house at magazines, to freelance art direction with John Lewis and Marks and Spencer, Lucy took a leap of faith in lockdown, when all her work disappeared, and wrote a course on Interiors Styling. That creative risk changed everything fo her. In this episode we talk about what the journey looked like and the practical and creative challenges of writing an illustrated book.

Links

The Home Style Handbook - Lucy Gough

Lucy Gough's Online Interior Styling Courses - course.lucygoughstylist.com

Lucy Gough on Instagram @style_by_lucy

Home Matters - Penny Wincer

Penny's Book Proposal Group Program - pennywincerwrites.com

Not Too Busy To Write on Substack - pennywincer.substack.com

Alice Vincent is a writer and broadcaster, and the author of Rootbound: Rewilding a life and Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival, both of which were longlisted for the Wainwright Prize. In this conversation we talk about how books begin and evolve for Alice, how she structures her time between columns, book writing and her newsletter and finding home in a balcony garden.

Links

Why Women Grow - Alice Vincent

Rootbound - Alice Vincent

Hark - Alice Vincent (pre-order)

Savour Newsletter - savour.substack.com

Home Matters - Penny Wincer

Not Too Busy To Write on Substack - pennywincer.substack.com

The next Book Proposal Group Program begins Oct 1st. You can book your place at pennywincerwrites.com

You can find all the books from Series 9 of Not To Busy To Write at Bookshop.org

Sunday Times bestselling author Clover Stroud's latest book The Giant in the Skyline begins with a difficult decision about whether to uproot her family from their home in Oxfordshire in order to keep the family together, and leads to a pilgrimage of discovery about what it means to feel at home and belong. We talk about grief's affect on our feelings of belonging, how our experience of mothering is affected by our immediate environment and how her life has changed (and not changed) since her family's move from rural Oxfordshire to the suburbs of Washington DC.

The next Non-Fiction Book Proposal Group Program begins Oct 1st. Visit pennywincerwrites.com/bookproposalgroup to grab your place. You'll also find information there for the Grant Place for writers on a low income.

Links

The Giant in the Skyline - Clover Stroud

The Wild Other - Clover Stroud

Home Matters - Penny Wincer

Clover Stroud on Substack - cloverstroud.substack.com

Not Too Busy To Write on Substack - pennywincer.substack.com

Non-Fiction Book Proposal Program - pennywincerwrites.com/bookproposalgroup

Kerri ni Dochartaigh is the award winning author of Thin Places and Cacophany of Bone. Kerri's work delves deep into home and belonging, from her childhood in Derry during the troubles, where her family were forced to leave their home, to an adulthood of wrestlessness, unable to find a feeling of home, until she returned to the Irish landscape of her early years.

We talk about intergenerational trauma, what it means to our sense of safety and belonging to have a home forcibly removed, as so many are facing in the world today, and finding home in the Irish landscape, in community, in our bodies and ritual.

We also talk about creativity and caregiving, and the joys of teaching and mentoring other writers.

Links

Thin Places - Kerri ni Dochartaigh

Cacophony of Bone - Kerri ni Dochartaigh

In The Garden: Essays on Nature and Growing (Daunt Books)

The Garden Against Time - Olivia Laing

Unearthed - Claire Ratinon

Uprooting - Marchelle Farrell

Home Matters - Penny Wincer

Kerri on Substack kerrindochartaigh.substack.com

Penny on Substack pennywincer.substack.com

The tables are turned for the first episode of series 9 - host Penny Wincer is being interviewed by author Caro Giles about her new book Home Matters.

We talk about what draws Penny to write about home, digging beneath the surface of homes to find meaning behind the choices we make and how objects become portraits and tell stories about our lives and identities.

We also talk about weaving memoir and non-fiction together, making choices about the personal and political aspects of the book and the challenges of writing and publishing a book that doesn't fit neatly into categories.

Links

Home Matters - Penny Wincer

Twelve Moons - Caro Giles

All The Houses I've Ever Lived In - Kieran Yates

The Lonely City - Olivia Laing

Monkey Grip - Helen Garner

Penny on Substack pennywincer.substack.com

Caro on Substack carogiles.substack.com

Stacey Heale is a fashion academic and writer whose husband Greg was diagnosed with terminal cancer when their youngest daughter was just a baby. Greg died 5 years later. In her memoir Now Is Not The Time For Flowers, Stacey writes about the big conversations that arise from imminent death. In this epsiode Stacey and I talk about writing about the dead, abandoning the typical memoir structure and the very funny side of a very dark experience. Now Is Not The Time For Flowers is out March 28th

Links

Now Is Not The Time For Flowers - Stacey Heale

Stacey Heale on Instagram @stacey_heale

Not Too Busy To Write on Substack - pennywincer.substack.com

Jesse Sutanto is the best selling author of Dial A for Aunties and Vera Wang's Unsolicited Advise for Murders and the winner of the Comic Writer in Print Award 2021. Jesse and I chat about her latest book in her very funny Aunties crime series The Good, The Bad and The Auntie, about her journey from Oxford MFA in Creative Writing, to leaning into her irreverent funny side and the success it led to. We also talk about writing drafts in 5 weeks (yes 5 weeks!!), the joy of sharing her Indo-Chinese culture with the rest fo the world and her favourite funny authors.

Links

The Good, The Bad and The Aunties - Jesse Sutanto

Dial A For Aunties - Jesse Sutanto

Vera Wang's Unsolicited Advice for Murders - Jesse Sutanto

Jesse Sutanto on Instagram @jesseqsutanto

Not Too Busy To Write on Substack pennywincer.substack.com

Write Your Non-Fiction Book Proposal with Penny Wincer is at 7pm March 27th Book you place here - pennywincerwrites.com/workshops

Podcast listeners can use the code TOOBUSY at checkout to receive £5 off