Joanna Frank has been a publisher and literary agent, and now works as a literary consultant, offering close editorial guidance to new writers, helping them refine and polish their work, and eventually submitting to literary agents on their behalf. She has published, edited, represented and launched the careers of a diverse range of authors including Joanne Harris, Louise Doughty, Alan Titchmarsh, Jojo Moyes, Simon Berthon, Marika Cobbold and Kirsty Wark.
You can read more about her professional background here: www.joannafrank.org. She has also written two written two novels herself, so has experienced the fiction-writing process from every angle. Having fulfilled her lifelong dream of moving to Provence, she relishes the opportunity to share her professional experience with a group of writers in such an idyllic setting.
For the inaugural course in May 2024, she is extremely honoured to welcome as guest tutor, a former client, the writer, journalist and Oxford University Creative Writing tutor, Rebecca Abrams.
Rebecca Abrams is an award-winning author, journalist and editor, with many years’ experience as a teacher of both fiction and non-fiction. She has taught on the Masters in Creative Writing at Oxford University since 2008, and before that was an honorary teaching fellow on the acclaimed Writing Programme at Warwick University.
She tutors for the Oxford Life Writing Centre at Wolfson College and the Oxford University Write Now Summer School. She has also held posts as First Story Writer-in-Residence from 2010-2012, Gladstone’s Library Writer-in-Residence from 2015-16, and Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at Brasenose College, Oxford from 2017-20.
Rebecca is the author of seven published works and three stage plays. Her debut novel, Touching Distance (Picador, 2009) was shortlisted for the McKitterick Prize for Literature and won the MJA Open Book Award for Fiction. Her most recent non-fiction publications include Licoricia of Winchester: Power and Prejudice in Medieval England (LOWA, 2022), The Jewish Journey: 4000 Years in 22 Objects (Ashmolean, 2017), and Jewish Treasures of Oxford Libraries (Bodleian Libraries, 2020), which was long-listed for the Wingate Literary Prize. She is also the author of the best-selling self-help books When Parents Die: Learning to Live with the Loss of a Parent (Taylor & Francis, 3rd edition, 2012) and Three Shoes, One Sock and No Hairbrush: Everything you need to know about having your second child (Cassell, 2009). Her debut stage play, All of Us, a revisioning of Sophocles’ Electra, premiered in New Zealand in 2023.
A long-standing journalist for the UK national press, her articles have appeared in the Guardian, Financial Times, Vogue, New Statesman, Sunday Times, Observer and the Independent. A former columnist on the Daily Telegraph, she is the recipient of an Amnesty International Press Award for Journalism and is a regular literary critic for the Financial Times.
Baz Butcher had a career of more than thirty years in PR, advertising and marketing and established his own agency in Soho, where he numbered BBC Radio among his most prominent clients. He had, however, always yearned for a second career in hospitality and was thrilled to make a mid-life professional change in 2015 when he tok over the iconic White Hart of Wytham in Oxford.
He loves nothing more than welcoming guests and lavishing them with home-cooked food and local wine in stunning surroundings, and will be preparing breakfast, lunch and dinner for all attendees throughout the course. He will also be on hand to ensure that guests have everything they need to make the most of their stay and to address any queries or concerns that may arise.
