The Writers’ Gym Podcast

Victoria Dowd, bestselling crime writer and Vice Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association Dr Rachel Knightley is joined at the Writers' Gym by prize and award-winning author, Victoria Dowd.   Victoria is the award-winning author of the bestselling Smart Woman’s Mystery series and has been shortlisted for the CWA Dagger. Her novel, The Smart Woman’s Guide to Murder, won The People’s Book Prize for f...

What’s the most damaging advice you’ve ever received as a writer? Dr Rachel Knightley reflects on what the wrong and right ‘shoulds’ can do to our ability to make time for our writing and ourselves, and how to take control of our reactions to the messaging we receive. Rachel provides a creative confidence and writing ‘Think On The Page’ Writers’ Gym exercise to create the time and writing that wor...

Dr Rachel Knightley’s guest at the Writers’ Gym this episode is award-winning author Nathan Newman.  Nathan is a novelist and filmmaker based in London. Their short stories have won awards, including the James Knudsen Prize for Fiction, and been published in literary journals and anthologies. Their debut novel, How To Leave The House was released to critical acclaim, and was a New Yorker and New Y...

Showing up for yourself and sharing your achievements can be scary, but instead of waiting for the feelings to change we can shift the focus to action that empowers. If you enjoyed listening to the Writers' Gym Podcast, head to our websites at www.writersgym.com , www.rachelknightleycoaching.com , and follow us on instagram: @jointhewritersgym @rachelknightleycoaching

Lucy Kate Barnes, Trustee and Co-Founder of Lawyers Who Care Dr Rachel Knightley’s guest at the Writers’ Gym is her coaching client, award-winning advocate Lucy Kate Barnes. Lucy grew up on council estates. She went into care at 13 and fell off the "care cliff" at 16. Aged 18, she studies law at Surrey. She is now a barrister. Alongside her legal career, she set up charity Lawyers Who Care and is...

Rachel shares how a common phrase helps us cut through what we fear and focus on what we want — instead of getting caught up in unhelpful ‘what-ifs’ that suppress the creative ones. If you enjoyed listening to the Writers' Gym Podcast, head to our websites at www.writersgym.com , www.rachelknightleycoaching.com , and follow us on instagram: @jointhewritersgym @rachelknightleycoaching

Helen Marshall, multi-award-winning author and academic  Dr Rachel Knightley is joined at the Writers' Gym by World Fantasy and British Fantasy Award winning author, Dr Helen Marshall. Helen is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Queensland. She has won the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award and the Shirley Jackson Award for her three collections of short st...

Most of us are looking for more time. But what if instead of looking for more of it, we first look at our beliefs around how we ‘should’ use the time we already have? Dr Rachel Knightley offers thoughts and strategies around time, writing and how we allow ourselves to create the things we want to put in the world. 

Dr Rachel's Knightley's guest is Ramsey Campbell, defined by The Oxford Companion to English Literature as “Britain’s most respected living horror writer”. The Washington Post sums up his work as “one of the monumental accomplishments of modern popular fiction”. In 2015 he was made an Honorary Fellow of Liverpool John Moores University for outstanding services to literature. His latest novels are...

If you’re getting distracted or put off from writing, it might just be you’re spending more time in the ‘what-does-this-say-about-me’ fog than in the idea at its centre: to write your story, and to discover what that story is by writing it. Dr Rachel Knightley demonstrates how our energy, focus and time can be sucked away into that fog, or channeled into creativity. 

Dr Rachel Knightley draws an the Excuses Bingo card she and members of the Writers’ Gym created in a recent workshop, and works through how each of these ‘reasons’ not to write might just contain a reminder of why we really want to write in the first place.

Dr Rachel Knightley is joined at the Writers' Gym by Emmy award winning script-writer, novelist and director Doug Naylor. He co-created the long running hugely successful sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf, has written or co-written every episode across thirteen series and has directed over twenty episodes. Doug also co-founded Grant Naylor Productions in 1991 which made series IV to X of Red Dwarf. Doug has...

Dr Rachel Knightley is joined at the Writers' Gym by Lee Murray ONZM (Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit) . Lee is a writer, editor, poet and screenwriter from Aotearoa New Zealand, a Shirley Jackson Award and five-time Bram Stoker Award® winner. A USA Today bestselling author with more than forty titles to her credit, including novels, collections, anthologies, nonfiction, poetry, and seve...

What do the words we really hate, really want to tell us? Dr Rachel Knightley takes the word that annoys her the most and spends time listening to what it might have wanted to tell her – and what listening to it might mean for her confidence and creativity.

Multi-award-winning novelist Lavie Tidhar is Dr Rachel Knightley's guest on the Writers' Gym Podcast. Lavie’s work encompasses literary fiction (Maror, Adama, Golgotha and Six Lives), cross-genre classics such as Jerwood Prize winner A Man Lies Dreaming and World Fantasy Award winner Osama, and genre works like the Campbell and Neukom winner Central Station. His work has been translated into multi...

One thing at a time, or freedom to flip between? What system of working really summons your creativity and what gets in the way? Dr Rachel Knightley wants to hear from you.

Dr Rachel Knightley is joined by her client, award-winning true crime writer and researcher, Sarah Bax Horton. Sarah is currently appearing in Lucy Worsley’s Victorian Murder Club on BBC2. The three-part miniseries is based on the subject of her second book Arm of Eve: Investigating the Thames Torso Murders (The History Press), for which she won the RBAM (Ripperology Books And More) Book of the Ye...

Unblock your writing and your right to write: Dr Rachel Knightley identifies and debunks the myth that's most got in her way as a writer, and how believing in ourselves, not our monsters, is the purpose of the stories we tell ourselves.

Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes joins Dr Rachel Knightley on the Writers' Gym Podcast, discussing how we turn interests and passions into writing careers. Xavi is Reader in English Literature and Film at Manchester Metropolitan University and a founding member of the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies. His publications include the monographs Contemporary Body Horror (CUP, 2024), Horror Film and Affect (R...

Dr Rachel Knightley shares how a Writers' Gym member's fear of plagiarizing can be turned from a 'reason' not to write into a reason to write as much as possible.

Ally Wilkes joins Dr Rachel Knightley at the Writers' Gym to discuss the power of horror fiction to explore identity and the highs and lows of creating a writing life that works for the individual you are.     Ally’s debut novel, All the White Spaces, was a Bram Stoker Award finalist, and her second novel, Where the Dead Wait, was one of Esquire’s best horror books of 2023. Her short fiction has b...

Dr Rachel Knightley shares three resolutions for creative confidence on the page and in life.

Dr Rachel Knightley is joined by author and editor Jenny Rogers, one of the UK’s most experienced executive coaches. Jenny’s book, Are You Listening? published by Penguin Random House, tells human stories from the perspective of a coach: it tackles common human dilemmas such as how to overcome shame after a mistake, how to face disappointment and  bereavement, what it means to start a new career o...

Kayleigh Dobbs is an author, editor, and playwright from South Wales. She is the founder of Happy Goat Horror, a review site and podcast with a focus on independent horror. Her recent short story collection The End (Black Shuck Shadows) was a 2023 Imadjinn Award Finalist. This year she has presented and interviewed authors for World Fantasy Con and Edge-lit. https://happygoathorror.com/ Connect he...

Andrew was for ten years the Director of the Creative Writing programme at UEA, where he taught for twenty years on the MA in Creative Writing. He is the author of the bestselling guidebook, The Art of Writing Fiction, recently reissued in an updated second edition, and the monograph Against Creative Writing. His first novel Pig was the winner of the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, a...