Introducing life writing tutor Katy Massey
Katy Massey writes fiction, scripts and memoir and teaches on the two-year Life Writing Programme.
When do you first remember wanting to be a writer? From when I first learned to read, I imagined myself writing. It felt natural. After I went to school and was set writing tasks, I realised that I didn’t want to do anything else. I eventually became a journalist and now, a creative writer.
You were a journalist for fifteen years before moving to fiction. How did your journalism inform your creative writing? Journalism is excellent for learning discipline, for instance overcoming the tyranny of the empty page, learning to write to length and how to meet a deadline. But in terms of creativity, I had to start anew. When I was a journalist I didn’t feel that I was a very creative person!
You completed a PhD on memoir and autobiography at Newcastle University. You then went on to publish two anthologies of memoir: Tangled Roots: True Life Stories About Mixed Race Britain, and Who Are We Now? a collection of first-person experiences of the 2016 Brexit referendum. Tell us about your PHD and those two projects. My PhD was on memoir and how some groups of people’s stories are never recorded, while other more privileged groups are over-represented in the genre. These projects set out to redress that balance by publishing lesser-heard voices, but also extending the participation of people in writing their own stories. I ran workshops, edited pieces alongside new authors and generally worked to spread the word about memoir writing, and how it belongs to everyone. Across these projects, I published over 50 novice writers.
Your memoir Are We Home Yet? about your relationship with your mother was published in 2020 by Jacaranda and was shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize and the Portico Prize – congratulations. How was it writing about that relationship? Difficult but necessary. I wrote that book because, like many people, my personal history is patchy, challenging and ultimately I don’t know all the facts about my family background. And that’s ok. Life stories don’t need certainty, they need creativity. In fact, too much certainty can be off-putting.
You went on to write a crime novel All Us Sinners set in Leeds in the 1970s with a serial killer on the loose. How did that process differ from writing memoir? It was entirely different. I had to learn that it was okay to make things up! How to plot, pace and plan a work of fiction was new to me, and it took me a couple of years to learn how.
You teach on the two-year Life Writing Programme. What is life writing and how does its study differ from creative writing? Life writing means crafting a narrative which is satisfying to the reader out of the messiness of life as it is lived. However well-planned, or conventional, everybody will deal with unexpected events, grief and the passing of time. Storytelling using this raw material can be challenging but also extremely rewarding.
You’ve taught creative and life writing for a number of years. How does that impact your own creative process? I don’t think it does in terms of what I write, but it does allow me to think about how I have come to my own way of working, externalise this process and consider if my own techniques will work for other writers.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given about writing? That it isn’t magic: Inspiring words will not usually ‘just come’ – they often require hard work. And very few people are ‘naturals’ but the craft can be learned. Thank goodness!
What’s your go-to book about the craft of writing? ‘On Writing’ by Stephen King. It’s so good. Not least because he is very honest about how he writes, the process of storytelling, and his material (the books, the films the mini-series…) is all around us. It also doubles as his memoir!
You’re marooned on a desert island with the complete works of Shakespeare and a spiritual text of your choice. What fiction book do you want to have with you? I would have ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ by Jean Rys with me – a joy and a comfort for all times.
What are you working on at the moment? The follow up to All Us Sinners which is due out in the summer of 2025.
If you’re interested in life writing, why not sign up to our taster session on 2 September, or the two-year Life Writing Program starting on 30 September? You can follow Katy on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.