The Hungry Writer

The Oven House 

It used to be a joke among my students, when I was teaching at the University of Kent, that I couldn't get through a seminar without mentioning food or drink. It's not that I planned to talk or write about eating... and it's not that I was always thinking about food, at least not consciously... but it was and still is true that I love eating, and cooking, and good wine, and combining those three things with family, good friends and good conversation has, for me, always been a recipe for joy.

Food played a prominent part in my first book, a novel called The Oven House - it was comfort and nurture, attempted to fill an absence by satisfying the senses. It cropped up in my poems too. And after moving to the South of France in 2007 I started to think about a larger project where the people, the food and the words in my life might collide. I had ideas to write about houses, kitchens, my family, about South Wales where I was born and grew up, about  the food I grew up with and the food I was now cooking and sharing with people I loved. About home, about leaving home and finding ways back. 

'the hungry writer' was a way for me to begin. 

That was back in October 2010. I blogged once a week for a year about food and family, about life and writing, and so many people followed me and encouraged me that I didn't want to stop. And there was always something else to eat, something else to read and to write about. Something else to share.  

And now there's a book, a simmered reduction of the first five years of the blog's life and times, The Hungry Writer, Stories, Recipes and 365 Writing Prompts, available direct from my lovely publisher, Cultured Llama, as well as from the usual online booksellers. You can read a review here. 

Thank you to all the hungry readers and fellow hungry writers who have shared my table.