writing what we do

Freedom to Write is a creative writing venture run by Yvonne Jewkes and Andy West. We hosted our 4th annual retreat in June 2025.

Our aim at Freedom to Write is to help you to write from your experience. When writing goes well, it can be intensely satisfying and fulfilling. We want you to experience that feeling of excitement when the writing flows, or when you read it back and think appreciatively, did I write that?!

Our main event is the annual summer writing retreat, which we have held at Mad Dogs and Vintage Vans in Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire for the last three years. The next retreat will be held in January in a beautiful historic house in the centre of Georgian Bath. Places get booked up quickly, so if you’d like to register for this wonderfully relaxing and inspiring three-night residential creative writing experience, we advise you book early. More details can be found on the ‘Retreat’ pages – link at the top.

We also run occasional one-day writing workshops at a private members club in Soho and hope to extend these to Bath too, where we ran a writing workshop and were ‘in conversation’ talking about our memoirs at the Curious Minds Festival in March 2025. We were also thrilled to appear at the Bath Festival in May 2024.

If you would like help getting started, getting going, or getting finished – or if you would appreciate being guided through your whole creative writing journey – check out our ‘Mentoring’ page to find out about 1:1 mentoring and editorial services.

We teach creative writing in prisons too and are currently Writers-in-Residence at HMP Grendon, funded by Arts Council England and Friends of Grendon, and at HMP Rye Hill. Any small profits we make from the retreats and workshops are used to support our work in prisons and with people who have been to prison or who have had a family member who has served a prison sentence.

Whichever event you sign up for, at Freedom to Write we will help you get started or overcome common mental blocks. Wherever you are on your writing journey, we will meet you there, and we’ll support you in taking the steps to write the story you are uniquely placed to tell.

Email us at contact@freedomtowrite.co.uk if you’d like to join our mailing list and be kept up to date with developments.