Clare Harvey - rediscovering forgotten voices through fiction'
Clare Harvey is a novelist, academic researcher, and educator. Her first bestselling novel, The Gunner Girl, won both the Exeter Novel Prize and the Joan Hessayon Award for debut fiction.
Clare was born in Devon. Her family moved several times whilst she was growing up, and she spent part of her childhood living in Mauritius. A passion for travel, and marriage to a serving soldier meant living and working all over the world, but Clare has now settled with her family on the outskirts of Nottingham.
Clare has recently gained a PhD in media studies with creative writing. Her thesis, Co-authoring With Forgotten Voices, follows her passion for rediscovering the often overlooked experience of women in wartime history. The research considered the creative and ethical effects of sampling and mixing wartime memoirs into biographical fiction.
Alongside her writing and academic research, Clare lectures in creative writing, runs writing workshops, and mentors emerging novelists.
Writing a Book
As the ‘trailing spouse’ of a serving soldier in the British Army, Clare has lived all over the world. She worked in journalism, public relations and English tuition, before finally realising her secret dream of becoming a writer.
Starting
“I started writing The Gunner Girl when I discovered that my mother-in-law had been a teenage soldier in the Second World War. This sowed the seeds for a deep and lasting curiosity into the way wartime changed young women’s lives and the incredible resilience they demonstrated in the face of danger. There are so many stories, still waiting to be told…”
Planning
“I love stories that have a strong sense of place. I was still an army wife when I wrote The Gunner Girl, and living on an army barracks, so the sights and sounds of military life readily suffused into the pages of the book. When I started to set stories further afield I felt I had to go and visit the locations.
Writing
” After the inspiration and the planning is done, there’s the strange concoction of panic and joy that fuels the writing process itself. All writers have their own favourite writing rituals. I like to write longhand, in fountain pen, untethered from the desk/laptop combo. I’m happy to write anywhere, but I find I’m most happy working in bed, with my dog beside me…”