Launch event for The Elixir by Anna Vaught
Please join Anna Vaught in conversation with Jonathan Taylor for the launch of The Elixir, the second In the bestselling teaching series with Hay Press.
The Alchemy (2023) asked whether we can build a writing life. The Elixir asks how we build great writing.
The Elixir is the second book in a planned series of five distinctive books on creative writing by novelist, memoirist, researcher and teacher Dr Anna Vaught. Drawing on decades of teaching and mentoring, the series offers a different approach to writing: one that combines rigorous literary craft with a commitment to accessibility, curiosity and compassion. Rather than assuming ideal circumstances, these books ask how writers can produce ambitious, beautiful work while living alongside illness, grief, caring responsibilities, demanding jobs and the ordinary complexities of life.
Where The Alchemy explored the conditions that make a creative life possible, The Elixir turns to the work itself: voice, reading, rhythm, sentences, structure, character and the close attention that transforms experience into literature. Together, the books argue that great writing is not produced despite life, but through engaging with it honestly, generously and with sustained attention.
Dr Anna Vaught With a BA and MA in Literature and a PhD in Creative Writing, Anna is a secondary English teacher, creative writing teacher, mentor, editor, independent researcher, and the author of twelve published books spanning literary fiction, nonfiction in both long and short form, and memoir. Fiction includes, Saving Lucia, Famished, The Zebra and Lord Jones, and nonfiction, her memoir in essays, These Envoys of Beauty, and her teaching series, of which The Elixir is the second text. Short work has been widely published and includes features for the national press plus columns in The Bookseller and Mslexia. She is also beginning to write upmarket fiction under the pen name Cat Llewelyn, so do keep an eye out! She is a guest university lecturer, a tutor for Jericho Writers, and teaches creative writing internationally. In 2022, Anna founded the Curae Prize, a literary prize for unpaid carer-writers, which is now becoming a foundation. She is also a committed campaigner, and a volunteer teacher and mentor to Palestinian undergraduates and recent graduates. Forthcoming work includes the remaining three books in her teaching series, an essay collection, A Cultural And Emotional History Of Lipstick, The Last Ship, a literary novel, plus novels Beautiful Little Fool and Long Haul, in the upmarket space. Her teaching platform, The Alchemy With Dr Anna Vaught, launches in the spring of 2027. She is the mother of three sons, comes from a large Welsh family, and lives in Wiltshire.
Dr Jonathan Taylor is an author, editor, lecturer and critic. His most recent books are Scablands and Other Stories (Salt, 2023) and A Physical Education (Goldsmiths, 2024). With Karen Stevens, he is co-editor of the book Creative Writing and the Critical Commentary: Reflection, Influence, Process (Bloomsbury, 2026). He is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Leicester.
PS: he was also a chief encourager and then external examiner for Anna's recent PhD by Published Works and is completely wonderful, which is why we asked him to host this.