About
I write essays about slow work, small places and the long walk home.
I’m Clara Whitlow. I live in Hebden Bridge, at the bottom of a steep valley in West Yorkshire, in a stone house with a desk by the window and thirty-one notebooks on the shelf above it.
Since 2019 I’ve written Longhand, a letter that goes out every other Sunday to 4,812 readers. It’s about writing by hand, walking without a destination, and the books on my desk. I’ve also written two books for Calder Press, and I’m working on a third.
Before all this I was a sub-editor on a regional paper for nine years, which is where I learned to cut. I still read everything aloud before I send it.
readers of the newsletter
letters since 2019
notebooks on the shelf
books, a third on the way
How I work
Pencil first, then the typewriter, then a walk.
Every essay starts in a notebook, usually on a walk. The first draft is in pencil, the second on a 1962 Olivetti, the third on the laptop. Then I go out again, and come back with the last changes.
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