The Cure for Sleep: a late-waking life

Tanya Shadrick — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 16:46:31 GMT

“Absorbing…robust, declarative even, but there is also something disquieting in this memoir… for Shadrick, to be a woman, an artist and a mother still seems something not quite of this world: a fairy tale that puzzles her even though – or perhaps because – it came true”

The TLS

Thank you for finding me here. I’m Tanya Shadrick, author of The Cure for Sleep (Weidenfeld & Nicolson): a memoir that explores the limits of personal freedom in small-town life - what it takes and costs to expand the possible.

Published in 2022, the book was a Waterstones and Evening Standard Non-Fiction Book of the Year. I decided to use my own season of visibility in the publishing world to open up a welcoming space here for other late-starters to risk their words…

…and for several years something astonishing and deeply soulful happened in this place as a result. Across three seasons, I shared a series of free extracts from my memoir, asking readers to dare their own short soul stories in return. Each post began long conversations in the comments fields, and I replied to everyone, always.

Buy the book

Many participants went on to publish books, essays or articles of their own, and still more formed supportive creative friendships that continue now beyond the life of the project itself.

And for the several hundred brave folk who submitted one or more stories? Every person received editorial feedback before seeing their work curated over on thecureforsleep.com.

All those stories entrusted to me are still showcased over there - and it’s a wonderful archive to explore if you want to experience the huge range of subjects, styles and voices that constellated around the prompts.

Why subscribe still?

While my story-collecting project on here is now ended and all the original posts hidden away, you are welcome to make/keep a free subscription to this space. In a future season, this might be the place where I’d offer new writing.

…but I’d be happier still if you’d make a free subscription direct to my author website, where you’d then receive occasional book extracts and and other pieces from my archive, as well as updates on new work.

“A sublimely written account of refusing to be defined by social constructs”

Waterstones

Explore my work…

You can find out more about the book, my background and my project archive at my author website. And if you enjoy listening to conversations on the art of living then these recordings might be the best way in to my past work:

For Sharon Blackie’s This Mythic Life podcast
For The Wintering Sessions with Katherine May
For Postcards from Midlife with Lorraine Candy and Trish Halpin
For BBC Radio 4 Pursuit of Beauty: Slow Art – Tanya is interviewed alongside her mentor sculptor David Nash

“From small-town outsider to someone stamping their presence on artistic and literary life” The IPaper

Season 3 (2023)

Season 2 (2022)

Season 1 (2021)

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“A book about daring to be, daring to head out, to encounter truths and to understand what place desire must have and must not have in a life. It is beautifully written, both careful and passionate, both slight and strong in its gestures like the best of art, and astonishingly, heartrendingly open. Intensity, beauty, subtlety, pain and courage – all are here”

Adam Nicolson

The Cure for Sleep with Tanya Shadrick