Email catb@hypatia-trust.org.uk to RSVP. Tickets are £4 payable at the door.
Leonard is elderly, overweight, and battling with failing eyesight. The last thing he wants is a stranger moving in.
After years spent caring for her mother, Vanessa has been left struggling to find work. Leonard is her only option.
As the lives of two very different people intertwine, something unexpected happens: assumptions begin to shift, boundaries between obligation and companionship become less certain, and a friendship is forged.
“By turns lyrical and uncompromising, Creatures of a Brief Season is a deeply immersive and compassionate novel told in perfect, pellucid prose.”
Creatures of a Brief Season is a novel about intimacy born of necessity, and what it means to rethink your life when the one you’d imagined hasn’t gone to plan.
Join us to discuss Clare’s new novel and to talk how writing honestly about aging, illness, and end-of-life care is not simply documenting decline but expanding our understanding of what it means to be human.
A companion workshop will take place on 12 and 13 February, consisting of two three-hour sessions for women who would like to explore their experiences of being a carer (in whatever form that may take) through a series of gentle creative writing exercises.
“Beautifully observed, deeply humane, and quietly unforgettable.”
Clare Owen worked as an actor and arts administrator in London before marrying a boat builder and moving to Cornwall. In 2008 she set up a theatre company specialising in improvising the real-life stories of audiences around the county, before going on to write and perform her own material. Her poetry and stories have been published in literary magazines and anthologies including Aspier, Mslexia, An Outbreak of Peace, Women Speak Volumes: An Anthology of Writing by Older Women, The Beautifully Mundane, and (in)visibilities. Her YA novel Zed and the Cormorants was published by Arachne Press in 2021 and won a Holyer an Gof award the following year. Creatures of a Brief Season was published by Hermitage Press in Sept 2026 and is her first adult fiction novel.
Instagram/Facebook @clareowenwriter