Interview with Wendy Pratt for the paperback release of The Ghost Lake
And an offer for subscribers!
Hi Everyone,
Today is the paperback publication of Wendy Pratt's lyrical book The Ghost Lake: A Memoir of Grief, Nature and Ancestry in Rural Yorkshire and I'm so happy she is joining me to answer a few questions!
I have loved The Ghost Lake since reading the submission Wendy sent in for the Nan Shepherd Prize in 2021 and was so delighted when she reached out after I left my previous role to set up Portobello Literary!
Here is a selection of what other people are saying about the book:
‘Remarkable’ Observer
‘Deeply profound… this is no ordinary memoir’ The Times
‘Astounding’ Adam Farrer
‘Brave and luminous’ Sarah Langford
‘Mesmerising’ Polly Atkin
‘Beautifully written’ Yorkshire Post
‘Steadfastly honest’ Geographical
I am setting out on a pilgrimage through an ancient landscape.
I will begin at my daughter’s grave.
Paleolake Flixton is an extinct lake in North Yorkshire. Human occupation of the site dates back thousands of years, but today, all that is left is a watermark.
Wendy Pratt brings readers on a pilgrimage around its periphery, to locations that have acted as journey markers in her own life. While traversing forests and fenland, she finds refuge in nature.
The Ghost Lake is a lyrical meditation on local history, changing landscapes, and the lives and legacies of rural working-class people.
You can read an extract of the book here.
Interview:
Tell me about The Ghost Lake and what inspired you to write this book?
I call The Ghost Lake a ‘nature-landscape memoir’, I think of it as a book that uses my own life as the subject in an exploration of what it means to belong — to place, to class, to society — when one feels at odds with it all. I feel that I exist in a kind of liminal space — a space between defined spaces, never quite making it out of the vestibule — as a working class writer working in a middle class dominated arena, as a bereaved and infertile woman and as someone who is often classed as ‘eccentric’ or odd. I have a strong suspicion that my oddness is actually neurodivergence, but have yet to be formally assessed and don’t feel I can fully embrace that label until I am. Which is probably quite a neurodivergent form of rigid thinking!
The ‘ghost lake’ of the title is an area in North Yorkshire called Paleolake Flixton. Paleolake Flixton is an extinct glacial lake, formed from receding glaciers in the last ice age. It is long gone, leaving behind a footprint of itself where villages grown from ancient settlements exist. This is the area that I grew up in and where I continue to live. The area is the background to my life. When I go anywhere — shops, to town, to visit family etc I am driving around and over the lake site. Because I have lived here all my life I can almost physically see earlier versions of myself imprinted in this very ancient landscape. The area has been inhabited for thousands of years, and there are some very important archaeological sites on the lake area, including Star Carr, a very famous mesolithic site. I found myself drawn to the idea of being a ‘lake person’ on the end of a line of lake people linked all the way back to these stone age settlements by the landscape itself, but at the time I also felt slightly disconnected to that landscape. I wanted to reconnect myself to the place that I live, rather than having it as background, and at the same time reconnect to earlier versions of myself. I set off on a series of pilgrimages around the lake, looking for connection points and telling the story of the landscape and found that by acknowledging and remembering the people of the place I was also acknowledging my own place on the lake and its value in that story.
The hardback was published last summer and today the paperback is coming out, what has been the response from readers? Have you been surprised by anything?
It has been received really well, I have a physical folder of emails and comments from people and reviewers who have found something to like in the book. I am always surprised by how willing people are to tell me their own stories of landscape connection when I do readings. It’s a humbling and moving experience to have a reader come to you afterwards and express their own grief or joy, share their memories or even discuss the more historical and archaeological aspects of the book. I was worried initially that as an amateur historian, rather than an academic, and a working class writer, I might face some criticism or pushback against me feeling I should be the one to tell these stories, but actually that is more to do with my own imposter syndrome and even the academic community have been welcoming and interested in what I have to say about this place. The most surprising response is probably still around my failed PhD. A few years ago I was part way through a creative writing PhD and had to drop out. Although the drive to encourage working class people onto the PhD was there, at that time the structure wasn't there to realistically support working class students, and I ended up dropping out because I just couldn't fit in, on many levels. I felt immense shame around that moment, but actually it was the right thing to do for me. I talk about that sense of not belonging in The Ghost Lake, and I also wrote a piece for The Guardian about it. I had an enormous response to the article; people are still writing to me to tell me about their own experiences of not fitting in in academia. I was genuinely surprised by how many people had had similar experiences and yet it wasn’t really talked about that much. I find that a lot, that there is a lot of noise about encouraging working class people to push through boundaries, but because there is a lack of working class voices within the management, structuring, organising areas of these drives there is a lack of understanding around what is actually needed as support. I’m trying not to get on my working class soap box, but one of the things that I wanted to do with The Ghost Lake was to write an interesting, intelligent nature/landscape book that would take up space on shelves in bookshops that were dominated by middle class voices. Working class people should be able to tell their own stories.
The book includes history, archaeology, memoir… how difficult was it to balance all the themes in one book?
The simple answer is: quite hard to get the balance right, but when I allowed myself to write in the way my brain naturally worked, rather than trying to emulate styles of memoir or nature writing already on the shelves, it felt easier.
It was always going to be an ambitious project, but I feel this wide ranging mix is almost a mirror to how my odd brain works. My thoughts are never singular, and I don’t think they should be. I wanted to write a book that found connection points that led to issues we are experiencing right now, and while the book isn't a call to arms for the environment (it’s more of an observation of what is happening and has happened in the environment from a personal point of view) when I see questions being asked in the media that are over simplified like, for example, ‘what can we do about the problem with species loss in agricultural areas?’, It irritates me, because there is no answer to the question. You have to ask: How can we encourage people to understand how food is grown? How can we solve the problem of people putting concrete on their gardens because they want neatness over messy nature? How can we encourage people to see that they have a responsibility to the rural environment even if they don't live there themselves? How can we get people to value the food they eat so that we are less reliant on mass agriculture and can move forward into practices that are better for the environment? How can we make people value non-cute animals like insects and worms and grubs? How do we change the viewpoint of being a visitor to the countryside, rather than being a part of an ecosystem? How do we encourage people to see themselves as animals affected by all the things declining wildlife experiences? And part of answering those questions and finding a way to make real change is to encourage people to see themselves as part of a heritage of landscape, and to see themselves as connected to a history within the landscape they exist in. I wanted to write that book.
How did you approach writing prose after publishing poetry?
It felt surprisingly comfortable to move from poetry to prose. I did also write a poetry collection (Blackbird Singing at Dusk) around similar themes to the memoir, and I think that was part of the process of crossing that bridge between poetry and prose an giving myself permission to abandon poetry for a while. Poetry, for me, is an art form that is about eliciting an emotional response. It cuts away the connective tissue until you are left with something that is the heart of communication, and it's that that you give your reader. Prose is much more about growing an idea out. They serve different purposes of expression, for me. Looking back, it’s interesting for me as the writer to revisit both the poetry collection and the memoir and see where the same sort of language is used. I’m told I have a lyrical style of prose, and I think that’s probably the poet in me. Interestingly, I have found it quite difficult to re enter poetry and write poems again since working in prose, but I think, I hope, it will come back!
You’re also a writing facilitator — what advice to you give others all the time that you always struggle to apply to your writing life?
Ha! All of it. The one my mentees and course attendees probably hear the most is ‘your voice is valid, your story deserves to be told. Don’t be afraid to kick down doors, and don’t be afraid to take your place at the table.’
What advice would you give for writers just starting out in crafting a writing career?
See above, but also — define your own version of success, and if you find yourself comparing your progress to others, remember that success is a wheel. Sometimes you are at the top, sometimes you are the the bottom.
What was the most helpful thing (whether a piece of advice, craft method, course, etc.) throughout your writing career that has made a difference?
I always turn to the god of all writing Hilary Mantel, when I struggle. I have Mantel quotes stuck all over my writing room. The latest one that is a kind of mantra right now is (I’m paraphrasing) ‘success isn't about the number of books you sell, but about how much further you can take your craft’. I want to always have a sense of curiosity in my work, and to develop and keep developing as a writer.
Thank you so much for such generous answers, Wendy! And if you haven't read The Ghost Lake yet, scroll down to see an offer!
Wendy Pratt is an author, poet and editor living and working on the North Yorkshire coast. She is the author of six poetry collections, her latest, Blackbird Singing at Dusk, is published by Nine Arches Press. Wendy’s nature-landscape memoir, The Ghost Lake was longlisted for the Nan Shepherd Prize and published by HarperCollins, The Borough Press in 2024. It was called ‘remarkable’ by the Guardian newspaper. Wendy is the founder and editor of Spelt magazine, a magazine devoted to celebrating and validating the rural experience. Wendy runs courses and workshops on her bestseller substack page Notes from the Margin.
Wendy also kindly wrote a post for my Proposal Course about researching on a budget:
Offer for subscribers:
An offer for subscribers!
If you buy Wendy’s beautiful book The Ghost Lake from an independent bookshop (here's a link to our faves over at Porty Books: The Ghost Lake: A Memoir of Grief, Nature and Ancestry in Rural Yorkshire by Wendy Pratt), you will get a six-month comp subscription to my Substack and have access to my submission and proposal courses, a monthly Zoom with me and my eternal gratitude!
Just DM/email me a screenshot of the order with your Substack email address and I will update your account.
I'm off for a quick London trip and will be back next week to discuss how money works in traditional publishing!
Until next time,
Caro x
