01244 532350
[email protected]

Category: writers in residence

"Words don't just drop out of the sky" - Karen Lloyd

by Rhian Waller | Friday, 06th December 2024

The truth is, there’s no-one else to do this for you. You show up at your desk, or your laptop, or your notebook and pen, or your dream head, and you live in constant fear that the words themselves will fail to show up: that what you’d thought of as a partnership, or a tacit agreement that the words will quite reasonably stick to their side of the bargain, is only ever provisional - Karen Lloyd

Knuckling Down: Editing with Sarah Smith

by Rhian Waller | Tuesday, 15th October 2024

That’s how I came to bite the bullet and restructure my novel during my residency at Gladstone’s and I couldn’t have found a better place to do it. The calm of the Reading Rooms, full of other people quietly beavering away, was the change of scene I needed - Sarah Smith

Writers in Residence 2025: Revealed!

by Rhian Waller | Thursday, 26th September 2024

We are delighted to reveal the names of our 2025 Writers in Residence. 

More than 150 writers applied for the opportunity to stay at the Library for up to a month to work on their next book.

Today, we can announce that the 2025 Writers in Residence at Gladstone’s Library are...

Meet the Neighbours - a blog by author Sarah Smith

by Rhian Waller | Monday, 02nd September 2024

"When I visit a new place, I often gravitate towards the local churchyard. It helps me get my bearings, and it’s an obvious choice for someone who writes historical fiction. All the memorials inscribed with dates and places and the graves of people who lived and died here. It’s a good place to start to understand the history of a place."

History: What it is and isn’t - Dan Kaszeta in the History Room

by Rhian Waller | Wednesday, 20th March 2024

History: What it is and isn’t

An article by Dan Kazseta, Writer in Residence in February and March 2024 and author of Toxic.

"History is not simply chronology and stenography, although those are basic building blocks. The uninitiated claim that “you can’t rewrite history” but that is literally not true. History is more than chronology, but even sometimes the chronology is wrong and has to get updated. History is also more than single-perspective accounts..."

Lighting the fire

by Rhian Waller | Monday, 16th January 2023

"Around me scurry other writers, presumably of every discipline, each entirely wrapped in our own private creative fury. Table lamps illuminate every desk, so each warm glow seems to hold a discrete weather system of intense concentration."

A blog by Writer in Residence Sophie Rickard

A Room of One's Own by Sarah Watling

by Rhian Waller | Thursday, 09th June 2022

"At Gladstone’s, I don’t waste so much time working my way back into the world I left at my desk the last time I was there. To paraphrase ee cummings, here I can carry my book with me. I carry it in my head. I am never without it."

Beautiful, Borgesian, Benign - a Blog by Writer in Residence Glen James Brown

by Rhian Waller | Thursday, 28th April 2022

I like the idea of the library as a sentient thing—something that can see inside into our skulls as we struggle with plot knots, school revision, whatever project we are bending our passions towards. And then it shifts itself about—subtly, it has over a century of practice—so the next time we glance at a certain shelf, the answers to our problems are right there, spine out.

Caoilinn Hughes on deadlines and serendipity

by Rhian Waller | Monday, 14th March 2022

"Half-way through my two-week stay at Gladstone’s Library, I felt the need to close my laptop and notebook and to spend a day reading. To anyone who knew what I had to achieve in the following week, taking time away from Microsoft Word would have seemed reckless, if not irresponsible!"

Learning from failure by Emily Morris

by Rhian Waller | Sunday, 20th October 2019

Back on a sweltering day in August, I was cycling along the Welsh Road when I heard a thud and a dull skid. I stopped, turned around and saw that one of my overstuffed panniers had fallen off the back of my bike and bounced into the gutter. I wondered if I could hail a black cab, but I wasn't in Manchester anymore.

Self care for writers by Suzannah Evans

by Rhian Waller | Thursday, 17th October 2019

It is undeniably brilliant to be a Poet in Residence here. Every day I get up and eat breakfast that someone else has cooked, leave the dishes and scuttle off to write in one of the most beautiful, wooden beamed, book-scented libraries I have ever been in. After lunch I take a walk around the village in one direction or another, and then come back to write more or read until dinner time.

My bleeding art by Suzannah Evans

by Rhian Waller | Friday, 11th October 2019

A couple of nights ago, at my Q&A event at the Library, an audience member asked a question along the lines of: If I cared about climate change, why wasn’t I writing political slogans instead of poems? A good question in these times of heightened worry for our world and our environment, and one that I answered briefly at the time, but which I think is very important to address more fully too. 

How to read 22,000 books by Amber Massie-Blomfield

by Rhian Waller | Sunday, 01st September 2019

William Gladstone (who lived until he was 88) read 22,000 books in his life. They like telling people this fact when they arrive at the Library, I suppose, because they like to see how their faces contort as they try to do the maths. Let me save you the trouble – it works out at around a book a day, for most of his adult life. 

Play time by Oliver Emanuel

by Rhian Waller | Monday, 18th March 2019

My two year old daughter has been with me at Gladstone’s for the past few days. Like any parent of a toddler will tell you, her desire for play is tireless. Tell me a story. Let’s go outside. Shall we dance? I’m a monster. Rrrr. There is seemingly no end to her enthusiasm and joy for making things up and mucking around.

Susanna Forrest on walking

by Rhian Waller | Tuesday, 12th March 2019

After a certain age your body lets you know that sitting for hours at a desk requires a degree of physical fitness. Via carpal tunnel, twanging hamstrings or a classic 'bad back', you discover that you are not, in fact, capable of eight hours on what the Germans call your 'sitzfleisch' or 'seat meat'. 

Sophie Mackintosh on finding a routine

by Rhian Waller | Wednesday, 06th March 2019

One of the most beneficial parts about coming to Gladstone’s is the opportunity to be far away from your usual daily routine. It’s amazing how much energy and brain-space is freed up when you take away so many parts of every day life - cooking, cleaning, commuting, and even having a television.

Sophie Mackintosh on making time to read

by Rhian Waller | Monday, 25th February 2019

Having never been a Writer in Residence before, I was extremely excited about the idea of getting an enormous amount of work done before having to head back to inconvenient ‘real life’. Write one book? The library is open from 9am to 10pm every day, after all - the problem will be writing too many books, if anything!

Gladstone, two books and a film for Christmas

by Rhian Waller | Thursday, 20th December 2018

This is my Christmas…I was going to say ‘letter’, but I guess it is more of a homily. Hey-ho!  I don’t get to preach often these days but this is what I feel 'compelled' to write. My text, if you can call it that, comes from Naomi Alderman, now a much lauded and fully established novelist, who was our first Writer in Residence in 2012.

NOT researching in Gladstone’s Library...

by Rhian Waller | Monday, 26th November 2018

You know that moment, when you really should be hard at work. When you really should be reading your way through a particularly dense chapter that is connected to the subject of your next book, with loads of footnotes and references which you have to laboriously work your way through, holding down the page number, consulting the back of the (heavy) book, with the name of the author, the publisher, the date of publication, and let’s face it, all the boring information you need. And your neck begins to ache, and you think you really must stretch your legs, at least stand up and take a turn along the shelves where the grass suddenly seems greener, and the books seem far more glamorous and fascinating. And so you do...

Polly Atkin on her February at Gladstone’s Library

by Rhian Waller | Wednesday, 13th June 2018

Sitting with my feet in a river in rich yellow sun on a June evening, it’s hard to think of February with any clarity. Looking towards the summer solstice after six weeks of (almost) unremittingly fine weather, the library and my wintery sojourn there seems very far away, almost implausible. 

Rachel Malik on Horne’s Guide to Whitby and Dracula

by Rhian Waller | Thursday, 19th April 2018

A few of the many things I loved about my stay:

The rook convention outside the library; window sills so wide you can organise your life on them; the giant woodpigeons; the mushroom quiche; that there is a book called The Best Books which Gladstone wrote his name in (some things seemed simpler in the late 19th Century); treacle tart; that I thought a lot, read a lot and wrote quite a lot. That I worked out on the last day my villain’s bad, bad secret. Guilty pleasure: watching both series of The Hour again in the evenings. I love Romola Garai.

Christmas reading recommends from the Gladstone's Library team!

by Rhian Waller | Friday, 15th December 2017

Gifting the perfect book to a person is one of the great joys of life; creating a perfect partnership which you can just feel in your bones will last.

With that in mind and as a little Christmas treat, the Gladstone's Library team have gathered together some of our books of the year and reading recommends perfect for stockings. If you are still looking for that perfect gift for someone special, we hope you can find inspiration within this guide! 

Key Strokes: Writer as Swimmer by William Atkins

by Rhian Waller | Monday, 27th February 2017

I’ve always been interested in the relationship between the work of the mind and that of the body, how one can influence the other, and the extent to which the physical overlaps with the mental: How the reservoir of one kind of energy seeps into or draws upon the other.

Gladfest interview: Ian Parks

by Rhian Waller | Tuesday, 02nd August 2016

Ian Parks was one of the first Writers in Residence at Gladstone's Library in 2012. His collections of poems include Shell Island, The Landing Stage, Love Poems 1979-2009, and The Exile's House. He is the editor of Versions of the North: Contemporary Yorkshire Poetry and was Writing Fellow at De Montfort University, Leicester from 2012 - 2014.

Stronger Together by Emma Rees

by Rhian Waller | Friday, 24th June 2016

Last weekend I ran a workshop for around 20 people as part of my writing residency at Gladstone’s Library. I arrived a week earlier, on the Sunday when the news was breaking about the brutal murders of dozens of people at Pulse, an LGBTQI nightclub in Orlando. On Thursday, as the ghastly news from America had only just begun to soak into the fabric of the world’s narrative palimpsest, I was writing at my desk when I heard about the murder of Jo Cox on the streets of West Yorkshire. That same day, I read, Boko Haram had shot dead 18 women who were attending a funeral in Kudu, Nigeria. The news reports on all three cases, and the Twitter updates and Facebook posts about them, combined to have the effect of making the world – already a dangerous place – feel somehow more urgently precarious.

Trustee Stella Duffy awarded OBE

by Rhian Waller | Friday, 17th June 2016

We are thrilled to offer our congratulations to 2012 Writer in Residence and Trustee, Stella Duffy, who has been awarded an OBE for Services to the Arts in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List! It is always a pleasure to work with Stella and we can think of few people more deserving of this award.

Snowdonia by Amy Liptrot

by Rhian Waller | Wednesday, 04th May 2016

This morning I put my swimsuit on under my clothes and drove from the Library to Snowdonia. On the way, I stopped at a Holy Well (‘The Welsh Lourdes’, 1 pound entry) where they displayed the crutches of pilgrims, no longer needed after taking the Holy Water.

The Writing Process by Susan Barker

by Rhian Waller | Wednesday, 13th April 2016

A writer I like, Mohsin Hamed, wrote an essay for the New York Times a couple of years ago, in which he described the DNA of fiction as a double-helix: one strand comprised of what the writer knows, and the other strand comprised of what the writer wants to know.

A blog by Rebecca Farmer

by Rhian Waller | Wednesday, 16th March 2016

If you are lucky enough to stay at Gladstone’s Library for a whole month, and I was, it is almost inevitable that, by the end of your stay, there will be things that get left behind and other things you will take away. I could get metaphysical about leaving behind a month of my life that had now become the past but, instead, I’ll tell you about the washing I left. Now is not the time for intimate detail but you’ll be relieved to know the washing was clean and had been left hanging on a rack. I was soon reunited with it when it arrived in the post neatly parcelled up as a kind of living proof that my stay at the Library hadn’t all been a dream…(cue wavy images, floaty music…). 

Interview: Natasha Pulley

by Rhian Waller | Thursday, 25th February 2016

Natasha Pulley is our February Writer in Residence here at Gladstone’s Library. This means that for the entire month, Natasha has been living in, working on her current project, reading, conversing and just generally giving us all a lot to think about over dinner!

How I met Sylvia Pankhurst by Rachel Holmes

by Rhian Waller | Tuesday, 26th January 2016

"How and why did you choose this subject?" 

As a biographer, this is the question I'm most frequently asked. I've been on the road with my latest book, Eleanor Marx: A Life for nearly two years since it was published on May Day 2014, and there's not a single event, interview, lecture or festival so far where this question hasn't come up. 

The Gladstones and the Pankhursts by Rachel Holmes

by Rhian Waller | Wednesday, 25th November 2015

I’ve spent the day dusting off the historical connections between the Gladstones and the Pankhursts. These legendary British political families didn’t exactly have reciprocal dinner parties or exchange Christmas cards, but for the best part of two generations, they catalyzed each other’s lives.

A Feast of Words and Ideas: Gladfest by Robyn Cadwallader

by Rhian Waller | Tuesday, 10th November 2015

September isn’t the time to leave Australia and go travelling to the other side of the world. It’s the first month of spring. The air moves more lightly; the hard, hopeful buds are beginning to swell; the trees are coated in the bright green of young leaves; the blossom appears, seemingly, overnight; and the magpies turn ballsy. Outside my kitchen the Wisteria transforms from winding sticks to purple lanterns and the veggie garden grows weeds at an alarming rate.

Reflections - by Lachlan Mackinnon

by Rhian Waller | Friday, 31st July 2015

'On my way here, I read Joanne Limburg’s terrific new novel, A Want of Kindness, about Queen Anne. Quite apart from lighting up a patch of history I knew nothing about, the novel so engrossed me that I felt I was travelling through a much older country. I was therefore briefly startled by how much Gladstone’s Library is a child of his century...'

Shortlist for our 2016 Writers in Residence programme announced

by Rhian Waller | Thursday, 09th July 2015

Gladstone’s Library has revealed the 10 books shortlisted for its successful Writers in Residence programme.

Now into its fifth year, the prize was established by Gladstone’s Library in association with Damian Barr (saloniere and author of Maggie and Me) to explore and define liberal values in the twenty-first century.

The shortlist is made up of novels, poetry and creative non-fiction that, in the eyes of the shortlisters, best represent some of the most creative writing in the world today.

The Faith Thing

by Rhian Waller | Wednesday, 23rd May 2012

So, what of faith? Theres no getting away from it here in the Library, from its actual founding, to the theology room in the library itself, to the event last night to open the Robinson Room; from St

Naomi takes stock

by Rhian Waller | Thursday, 15th March 2012

Gladstone is everywhere in this building. Paintings, writings, sculptures, even a photograph or two. There's a statue of him in the library itself in which I swear he's doing the Saturday Night Fever dance. (Secretly, I give him a little Staying-Alive salute when I'm alone in the library late at night.)

Zombies, Run!

by Rhian Waller | Friday, 02nd March 2012

Here our Writer-In-Residence, Naomi Alderman talks about the new iPhone app which she has created with games studio Six to Start.

View News Archive >