Dr Sarah Clement is an award winning writer, having won a London Writers Award and a Creative Future Literary Award. Her work has been published in several literary magazines and anthologies. She is currently writing a book combining family memoir with a social history of stillbirth, supported by a DYCP grant from Arts Coucil England.
An independent scholar and former lecturer with a psychology PhD and creative writing MA, she writes about the inner life through both a personal and a research lens.
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Sarah Clement
Writer
Work in Progress
I am currently working on a book called
LOSTLING: THE STORY OF STILLBIRTH AND THE SEARCH FOR AN INVISIBLE BROTHER which blends family memoir and a sociocultural history of stillbirth.
My brother was born in 1960, a time when such babies were rarely spoken of, typically unseen by the parents, and buried in unknown communal graves. This work resonates with the current pressure for better recognition of, and openness around, pregnancy losses, and with the recent parliamentary debate about unknown graves for babies stillborn long ago, and belated commemoration.
I began working on this during my MA in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths. The opening of this work in progress is featured in the 2024 Goldfish anthology.​
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I have been awarded a Develop Your Creative Practice grant from Arts Council England to take this work in directions new to me: combining social history and literature; creating I-Poems (found poetry using public testimony); and making, and writing about, visual art. I will be working with mentors Julia Blackbburn Karen McCarthy Woolf and Leni Dothan.
Family heirloom, artist unnamed, undated
In Icelandic mythology the souls of stillborn babies become the Northern Lights
In the background are two earlier unpublished works. I see these as seedbeds for the book I am currently working on, Lostling.
The first is a memoir-in-essays, UNBLOTTING. This work centred on the themes of silence, articulation and mental health. The memoir was written on the London Writers Award Development Programme in 2021, and in 2020 when I was selected for free mentoring by writer Anna Vaught. The book's opening was shortlisted for the First Pages Prize, one of its essays is forthcoming in the Flare anthology on chronic illness, and one was longlisted for the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize 2023. I am currently seeking homes for selected individual pieces from this collection. I also wrote a proposal for an autofiction novel which expanded one of the essays. The opening of this novel, DO NOT THINK OF A WHITE BEAR, was published in the 2023 Goldfish anthology.
The second earlier work is an autobiographical coming-of-age novel, A TON OF FEATHERS. The opening of this novel was selected to appear in the TLC/AM Heath Free Reads Anthology, and was featured in The Literary Consultancy's Showcase. It has been shortlisted in: David Higham Associates Open Day competition; York Festival of Writing Friday Night Live Competition; Retreat West Novel Opening competition ; and longlisted in: Blue Pencil First Novel Award and Novel London Prize. It was chosen for the Spread the Word / Rocking Chair Books agent feedback opportunity and its pitch was a winner in the Cornerstones pitch competition.
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I used the pen name Sadie Nott for my creative writing a number of years and this was a helpful alter ego that enabled me to start writing about myself. I now do all my writing under my own name of Sarah Clement.
Pieces
Mary Ann, Sadie and Me
This is my personal / lyric essay about pen names, imaginary friends and about the dilemmas of writing trauma. It is also about Frida Kahlo's painting The Two Fridas. The essay was published in the UEA's nonfiction journal Hinterland in 2024.
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Frida Kahlo, The Two Fridas, 1939, Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City
Craze
This piece of flash fiction was chosen by Hanif Kureishi as a runner up in the Kureishi Chronicles writing competition. The theme of the competition was Youth. My piece explores playground crazes and family life.
Bear in Mind
This is the opening extract from an unpublished proposed novel called Do Not Think of a White Bear, published in the Goldfish Anthology 2023. This work blends autofiction and magical realism and draws on the idea that whilst some people have a Black Dog, others, like the protagonist and her mother, have a White Bear.
'Polar Bear' by Paul Smith, The Sculpture Garden
The Challenge
This story was shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize 2020. It was inspired by Lucian Freud's painting, 'Girl with a Kitten'.
Lucian Freud, Girl with a Kitten [1947]
Tate Archive © The Lucian Freud Archive
/ Bridgeman Images
I Am a Rock
This story was long listed in Reflex Fiction's Quarterly International Flash Fiction competition 2020. It was written in memory of my father. It is published online in Reflex Fiction and features in Reflex Press's Beguiled by a Wild Thing anthology.
Writ Large
This story was written in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. The disjointedness of its helix format gave me a way to write about what I was struggling to articulate. The story appeared in the Mechanics Institute Review's Stories in the Time of Covid-19 edition.
Ray
My allegorical story, 'Ray', was chosen as a winning story by Liar's League for their event on the theme of Women and Girls where it was read out by an actress Miranda Harrison at The Phoenix, London.
There was an old lady
This story was written in response to Creative Future's call for pieces on the theme of chemistry. It is about both pharmaceutical and human chemistry. The story won me a Creative Future Literary Award 2018. I read part of this story at the Creative Future Showcase in the London Literature Festival at the Southbank Centre. It is published in an anthology, Chemistry.
Olive at the Gallery
This short story is about identity, madness and art. It is based on Redon's painting, Ophelia among the Flowers. The story is forthcoming in ACE-funded recovery anthology A Wild and Precious Life. The anthology was published by Ubound in 2021. This story was also highly commended in the Liars' League & National Gallery short story competition.
Ophelia among the Flowers, Odilon Redon, 1905-8, National Gallery
Safe as Houses
'Safe as Houses' is a short story that grew from a Word Factory workshop about place. It explores what happens when something about a house mirrors the protagonist's past and her inner experience. The story appeared in The Selkie.
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Advent
This short story was published in The Book of Godless Verse in response to a call for pieces about Christmas and rituals people handmake in the face of life's every day messiness. The story is about a canine commemoration.
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Dandelion
This short story about family mealtimes was published in a Special Issue of the Journal of Psychosocial Studies on Offering and Receiving Food. It is also an early version of a chapter in A Ton of Feathers.
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Daisies
This is my first published piece of creative writing. It is a flash fiction story about grief. It appeared in LossLit.
Journalism
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Here are a couple of the journalistic pieces I have written:
Reading minds: the best mental health novels and memoirs of 2018. In Mental Health Today
Robert Clement obituary. In The Guardian.
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Academic papers
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Here is a selection of some of the academic articles I have written:
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Mental health research
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What is the impact of mental health-related stigma on help-seeking? A systematic review of quantitative and qualitative studies. In Psychological Medicine.
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Filmed v. live social contact interventions to reduce stigma: Randomised controlled trial. In the British Journal of Psychiatry.
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Status of bipolar disorder research: Bibliometric study. In the British Journal of Psychiatry.
Newspaper reporting on schizophrenia: A content analysis of five national newspapers at two time points. In Schizophrenia Research.
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Maternity research
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Childbirth on Television. In the British Journal of Midwifery.
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The Development of an Intrapartum Intervention Score Based on Women's Experiences. In the Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology.
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Does Reducing the Frequency of Routine Antenatal Visits Have Long Term Effects? Follow Up of Participants in a Randomised Controlled Trial. In the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
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Transvaginal ultrasound in pregnancy: Its acceptability to women and maternal psychological morbidity. In Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
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You can see all of my academic work on ResearchGate
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About
I began creative writing in 2014. I have completed short writing courses at City Lit, Goldsmiths and The Word Factory. For six years I attended a regular tutored writing workshop led by poet Caroline Natzler. In 2021 I was took part in the London Writers Awards Development Programme. In September 2022 I began studying for a Masters in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths and was awarded an MA with distiction.​
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I am proud to be a winner of a London Writers Award and a Creative Future Literary Award and am grateful to have been awarded the Katharine Orton Bursary for a Free Read from The Literary Consultancy and free mentoring from author Anna Vaught.
My creative writing has appeared in Hinterland, The Kureishi Chronicles, Liar's League, Reflex Fiction, The Mechanics' Institute Review, LossLit and The Selkie and in four anthologies, including A Wild and Precious Life (Unbound). My work has been shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize and for the First Pages Prize.
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Before changing direction to focus on creative writing, I worked for twenty-five years as a research psychologist, at Guys & St Thomas' and St George's medical schools, London South Bank University and at the Institute of Psychiatry at Kings College London. I have a PhD in Psychology from Goldsmiths and a diploma in Psychoanalytic Psychology from Birkbeck. My academic research centred mainly on mental health, particularly stigma and discrimination, health care experiences, trauma, and narrative and before this focused on women's experiences of pregnancy, childbirth and maternity care. My research work can be found here.
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In my current research for Lostling and with my ACE DYCP grant 'Developing Hybrid Memoir and Stillbirth Arts' I am exploring the sociocultural history of stillbirth; autoethnography; ambiguous loss; disenfranchised grief; postmemory; maternity research; death studies; intergenerational trauma; the 'replacement child'; poetic inquiry and I-Poetry; ekphrasis; and commemorative visual arts.
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In 2022 I was represented by the Good Literary Agency. My agent there has since left agenting, I am currently unrepresented, and I am exploring alternative agent representation.
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I have written an email course on memoir structure for Spread the Word. I have been a mentor and volunteer ghostwriter with the Ministry of Stories. I live in south London with my husband and have two adult sons.
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You can discover more about me in this 2022 TLC showcase and in this 2019 interview with The Nottingham Review.
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News & Events
9th November 2024 AWARDED DYCP ACE FUNDING
Today I was successful in my application for an Develop Your Creative Practice grant from Arts Council England for 'Developing Hybrid Memoir and Stillbirth Arts' enabling me to work with mentors Julia Blackburn, Karen McCarthy Woolf, and Leni Dothan in 2025.
October 2024 AWARDED MA IN CREATIVE AND LIFE WRITING
This month I learned that I had been awarded an MA with distinction in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths, University of London.
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13th MARCH 2024 TALK ON POSTMEMORY & THE WHITE BOOK
Today I gave a talk at the Goldsmiths Literature Society entitled: 'Does postmemory theory work for individual intergenerational trauma? A close reading of Han Kang's The White Book'.
22nd September 2023 MY ESSAY IS LONGLISTED
Today I learned that the title essay from my collection TIN WOMAN was longlisted for the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize.
31st March 2023 MY STORY IS A RUNNER UP
Today I learned that my flash fiction piece, 'Craze', was chosen by Hanif Kureishi as a runner up in his Kureishi Chronicles writing competition. You can read it by scrolling down, here.
30th March 2023 READING - OPENING OF NEW WORK-IN- PROGRESS
Today I joined fellow Goldsmiths MA Creative and Life Writing Students to launch the Goldfish Anthology 2023. At the launch I read the opening to the new manuscript I am working on. This is either autofiction or a memoir with surreal elements and you can read it here.
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21st February 2023 MY MEMOIR COURSE BEGINS
Today is the first day of my my free self-paced four-part email course, The Shape of Me: Exploring Structure in Memoir. I wrote the course for Spread the Word as part of their Developing Tutors scheme. Participants can sign up to join up until 14th March 2023.
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28th September 2022 BEGAN CREATIVE WRITING MA
Today was the first day at Goldsmiths, University of London where I am studying for an MA in Creative and Life Writing to think more about the why and how of my writing and to work on my next book.
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1st July 2022 SHOWCASED BY TLC
Today The Literary Consultancy showcased me and my writing. The showcase includes an extract from my unpublished autobiographical coming of age novel, A Ton of Feathers.
16th MARCH 2022 AGENT REPRESENTATION
I am immensely happy to announce that I am now represented by agent Rukhsana Yasmin from The Good Literary Agency. Update: My agent has since left agenting and I am currently exploring alternative representation.
16th AUGUST 2021 READING - MEMOIR EXTRACT
I am reading an extract from my memoir-in-progress, Unblotting, in the open mic slot of the August Criptic Salon.
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17th May 2021 SHORTLISTED FOR FIRST PAGES PRIZE
I am overjoyed that the opening of Unblotting has been shortlisted for the international First Pages Prize, judged by Samatha Chang Director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
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13th May 2021 PUBLICATION IN ANTHOLOGY
Today, A Wild and Precious Life was published, a recovery anthology containing my short story 'Olive at the Gallery'.
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18th Jan 2021 LONDON WRITERS AWARD
Today I became one of the thirty writers awarded a London Writers Award and will join the LWA Development Programme to work on my memoir, Unblotting.
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14th Nov 2020 READING - SHORT STORY
I will be reading my short story 'I Am a Rock' at the online launch of Anita Goveas' new short story collection Families and Other Natural Disasters.
29th Apr 2020 BECOMING MENTORED
I have been selected by author Anna Vaught, author of Saving Lucia and Famished, to receive free mentoring from May - Sept 2020 for the memoir-in-stories I am currently working on.
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26th Nov 2019 READING - SHORT STORY
I'm reading my short story 'Olive at the Gallery' and discussing writing and recovery at The Gallery Cafe, Bethnal Green at an event with three other writers from the A Wild and Precious Life anthology and chaired by Lily Dunn.
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1st Sep 2019 ON PANEL - PRIMADONNA FESTIVAL
My spoof rejection letter won me a place on the Don't Mess with Writers, We'll Describe You panel chaired by Maxine Mawhinney at the Primadonna Festival 30th Aug - 1st September, Suffolk.
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13th Aug 2019 READING - SHORT STORY
My short story, 'Ray' will be read by actress Miranda Harrison at the Liar's League Women and Girls event at The Phoenix on this day.
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7th Nov 2018 KATHARINE ORTON BURSARY
I was awarded the Katharine Orton Bursary for a Free Read for A Ton of Feathers from The Literary Consultancy today.
26th Oct 2018 READING - SHORT STORY
I'm reading my short story, 'There was an old lady', at the Creative Future showcase as part of the London Literature Festival at the Southbank Centre.
31st July 2018 CREATIVE FUTURE LITERARY AWARD
Today I became one of twelve writers and poets to win a Creative Future Literary Award for underrepresented writers.
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26th June 2017 READING - SHORT STORY
I'm reading an extract from my short story, 'Dandelion', at the Fifth BSA Food Study Group Conference: Food & Society 2017 in a Symposium on Offering Food - Receiving Food
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9th Sep 2016 READING - NOVEL EXTRACT
I'm reading the opening of my novel, A Ton of Feathers, at the York Festival of Writing Friday Night Live event
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