About Us

Our Story

Founded in 2020 by Kathryn Bevis, The Writing School is here to helping you find your creative voice. Our team of experienced, award-winning tutors are all working writers and artists and offer personalised guidance through our courses. We offer a range of short and long courses to suit writers and illustrators at any level. Whether you have a track record of publication or are just starting out, we can provide the support you need to bring your ideas to life. Explore your creativity from home or in person with our engaging, professional courses. Let's write together!

Our Founder

The Writing School was founded in 2020 by Kathryn Bevis, the hugely talented poet and teacher, who is deeply missed by everyone who knew her and by readers who knew her through her work.

Her poetic career was brilliant and within a few years of beginning to write full-time she rose to national prominence, as a poet of huge ability and imagination. Kathryn’s poems first came to the notice of leading journals including Poetry Wales, Poetry Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Magma, The London Magazine, Wasafiri, Mslexia, The North Magazine and the TLS. Her work would also go onto have several notable competition successes including the Wales Poetry Award, the inaugural Crysse Morrison Award, the Second Light Poetry Competition, the Mairtín Crawford Award for Poetry and the Poetry Society Members’ Competition. In 2023 ‘My body tells me that she’s filing for divorce’ was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. In 2024 'Everyone will be there’ was highly commended in the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. Kathryn was also proud to serve as the Hampshire Poet Laureate.

Kathryn’s body of work is collected in two published volumes. 2022’s Flamingo was one of the Poetry Society’s ‘Books of the Year’ and The Butterfly House in 2024 emerged to hugely positive reviews. Both books demonstrate her incredible skill, musicality and imagination through superb poems on animals, love, memory and family. Her poems are available from her publisher Seren: https://www.serenbooks.com/seren-author/kathryn-bevis/

The afterlife of her work looks assured, and her late poems particularly are an inspiration and consolation to those living with illness. Her poems dealing with her own cancer will become long-lived part of the English canon and are some of the most humane and beautiful reflections on love and mortality written in this century.

As well as a brilliant individual artist Kathryn was also an incredible champion of poetry, and a builder of artistic communities. She supported the Winchester Poetry Festival for a decade and they have devoted a prize to her memory to mark her contribution: The Kathryn Bevis Prize is awarded annually to an outstanding Hampshire writer.

Kathryn also launched innumerable poetic careers with her kind, thoughtful and encouraging teaching, both through The Writing School and beyond. So many wonderful poets are working today, being published and winning prizes after she helped them to recognise, believe in and develop their talent. She believed in making the arts accessible, teaching in the prison system, libraries and anywhere there was a space to help people unlock their imagination. She also offered scholarships to many poets and we continue that tradition now in order that no-one be marginalised from writing by their financial resources.

Kathryn had the vision to plant a poetic orchard that she would not live to see ripen to maturity, but her legacy bequeaths us decades of harvest that we enjoy thankfully in her name. She is much missed by everyone associated with The Writing School.

Kathryn Bevis

Our Tutors

Jonathan Edwards

Poet, Teacher and Host for our Digital Retreats

Ewan Monaghan

Poet, Teacher and Organiser for our Digital Retreats

Jeanette Burton

Poet & Teacher for our Small Group, Online Courses

Vicky Morris

Poet and Associate Teacher, Host of In Person Retreats

Margie Sturton

Picture Book Author and Illustrator. Tutor for online courses

Kathryn Bevis

Founder of The Writing School.

At the Writing School we are proud to offer teaching and tuition from some of the UK's leading poets, writers and illustrators. Between them they offer huge experience including numerous publications and literary prizes.

Click on any images to view full biography.

Jonathan Edwards

Jonathan Edwards is the tutor for our Digital Poetry Retreats and is a firm favourite with our participants (check out the testimonials, here!). His first collection, My Family and Other Superheroes (Seren, 2014), received the Costa Poetry Award and the Wales Book of the Year People’s Choice Award, and was shortlisted for the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. His second collection, Gen (Seren, 2018), also received the Wales Book of the Year People’s Choice Award. His poem 'Bridge' was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem 2019 and he has received prizes in the Ledbury Festival International Poetry Competition, the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition and the Cardiff International Poetry Competition. He has read his poems on BBC radio and television and at festivals around the world, recorded them for the Poetry Archive and led workshops in schools, universities and prisons. He lives in Crosskeys, South Wales.

Ewan Monaghan

Ewan Monaghan is a Scottish poet, now resident in London, with work published in places like The Moth and The Four Faced Liar. His poems have been highly commended or shortlisted in competitions such as The Plough Prize, AUB International and the Fish Prize.

A former English teacher, Ewan has taught poetry in a range of formal and informal educational settings and is currently working for Writerz and Scribez on their community poetry programme. He has extensive experience with projects connecting young people and poetry, including a recent initiative for the United Nations and Fuel Theatre. He is a student on the MA in Writing Poetry at the Poetry School working with Glyn Maxwell.

Jeanette Burton

Jeanette Burton is a poet and English teacher from Belper in Derbyshire. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent University and has taught creative writing to students in the post-16 sector.

Her poetry appears in Poetry Wales, Mslexia, and in two Candlestick Press pamphlets. She has been placed in several competitions, including commended in the Winchester Poetry Prize 2022, highly commended in both the Wales Poetry Award 2021 and the Teignmouth Poetry Festival Open Competition 2022. She was awarded first place in the McLellan Poetry Prize 2021 and the Ware Poetry Prize 2022. Her pamphlet, What is this a family outing? was shortlisted for the inaugural Poetry Wales Pamphlet Competition 2021.

Vicky Morris

Vicky Morris is a British/Welsh poet, mentor and creative educator from north Wales. Her debut pamphlet If All This Never Happened (Southword Editions 2021) was a winner of the Munster Fool for Poetry International Chapbook Competition and was shortlisted for Best Poetry Pamphlet in the Saboteur Awards 2021.

Her poems have appeared widely in magazines and journals, including: The Rialto, Poetry Review, Poetry Wales and The North, and she is the editor of five anthologies of poetry and fiction by emerging young writers. Vicky has placed in various competitions including first place in the Prole Laureate Competition 2019 and the Aurora Prize 2020. She was recently shortlisted for the Mairtin Crawford Award for Poetry 2022 and highly commended in the Liverpool Poetry Prize 2022.

For the last 14 years, Vicky has built opportunities for young writers, founding Hive in 2016 for writers aged 14 to 30. Through Hive, she has mentored many emerging young poets who’ve received accolades such as the New Poets Prize and the Foyle Young Poets Award. Her work developing young writers earned her a Sarah Nulty Award in 2019. She is a recent Arvon/Jerwood mentee. www.vickymorris.co.uk

Margie Sturton

Margaret Sturton is an author and illustrator of children’s picture books. in 2018, she received a distinction for her MA in Children’s Book Illustration from Anglia Ruskin University. Her debut picture book, ‘A Fox called Herbert’, was published in 2020 by Andersen Press. ‘A Fox called Herbert’ was long listed for the Klauss Flugge Prize, short listed for the Jalak Prize and was read aloud by Stephen Fry and Sarah, Duchess of York. Margaret has continue to write and illustrate books with Andersen Press. ‘Two can Play’ was released in 2021 and there are more books in the pipeline.

Margaret has taught workshops for adults through The Writing School and ArtWell. She has run workshops for children and young adult at local schools. She has also given talks for the Wee Write Festival, Orange Beak Studio, Anglia Ruskin University and The House of Illustration.