• Home
• What would you expect on a WriteAway weekend?
• Who Leads WriteAway weekends?
• Who are WriteAway weekends for?
• What Would I Achieve on a WriteAway weekend?
• Essential Information And How To Book
• 

Any queries? Want to
know more? Just email getintouch@writeawaytravel.com

Who Leads WriteAway weekends?

Dea Birkett

Dea Birkett is a writer and broadcaster. Her weekly Travelling with Kids column appeared in the Guardian for over five years. She is a regular contributor to the Guardian and BBC Radio 4. Dea is Creative Director of www.manyriversfilms.co.uk, an Emmy-nominated documentary film production company.

She is author of seven books, including Jella. A Woman at Sea in a Man's World (winner of the Somerset Maugham Award), about her voyage on a cargo ship from West Africa; Serpent in Paradise (shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award), about her time on Pitcairn Island in the South Pacific, home of the few remaining descendents from the mutiny on The Bounty; and Spinsters Abroad. Victorian Lady Explorers ("subtle, acute, fascinating" Sunday Times). She has recently been made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Dea has a monthly business travel column, as well as a monthly on-line family travel column on www.takethefamily.com

She has worked with the National Portrait Gallery on Off the Beaten Track. Three Centuries of Women Travellers, producing a book to accompany the exhibition of the same name. She is director of Kids in Museums.

She is Creative Director of Many Rivers Films and co-director of TextWorkshop, running writing courses for museum and gallery professionals.

• www.deabirkett.com
• www.kidsinmuseums.org.uk
• www.manyriversfilms.co.uk
• www.textworkshop.co.uk
• See www.guardian.co.uk for some of Dea's recent articles.

"Thank you Dea. Was a truly terrific workshop. Am literally inspired." Michelle, workshop participant

Rory Maclean

Rory MacLean's six books, including best-sellers Stalin's Nose and Under the Dragon, have challenged and invigorated travel writing, and -- according to the late John Fowles -- are among works that 'marvellously explain why literature still lives'. Rory has won the Yorkshire Post Best First Work prize and an Arts Council Writers' Award, was twice shortlisted for the Thomas Cook/Daily Telegraph Travel Book Prize and was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. In his latest book Magic Bus (BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week) he retraces the Asia Overland hippie trail from Istanbul to India, travelling over five months by local buses through lands of astonishing beauty and hardship transformed since the Summer of Love.

Rory's travel journalism and book reviews appear in the Sunday Times, the Sunday Telegraph and the Guardian, as well as Conde Nast Traveller and Wanderlust. He is also a regular contributor to BBC Radio 3 and 4.

Born and educated in Canada, he divides his time between Dorset and Berlin.

"Rory MacLean is one of the most strikingly original and talented travel writers of our generation." author Katie Hickman.

• www.rorymaclean.com
• www.magicbus.info
• For Rory's monthly Guardian columns see www.guardian.co.uk/travel/rorymaclean

"Rory - you are an inspiration! Yes!" Mary, Bloomsbury Travel Writing Workshop participant

"So much of what Rory said struck a chord with me. I came away with ideas about how to incorporate the landscape of Languedoc-Rousillion into the novel I'm writing, how to tackle a problem I've got with the main character, and solving a metaphor. After the workshop the ideas just flowed and I've come home with pages full of them!" Fiona, Workshop participant

"Well, what a guy!" Janice, Workshop participant