Clare Owen in conversation with Jackie Taylor
Care is a universal experience. Everyone has been cared for, most people will care for someone, almost everyone hopes to be cared for at the end of their life. So, why has intimate personal care been so absent from literary fiction? Why is illness so often used as a plot device rather than explored as a lived experience? How do we write characters whose futures are short without making their lives feel diminished?
Join local authors Clare Owen and Jackie Taylor to discuss Clare’s new novel, Creatures of a Brief Season, and how writing honestly about ageing, illness, and end-of-life care is not simply documenting decline but expanding our understanding of what it means to be human.
MAXIMUM NUMBERS: 30
VENUE: Heritage Centre
DAY/DATE/TIMES: Sunday 4th October 2026 11.00-12.30
EVENT LEADER: Clare Owen with Jackie Taylor
EVENT LEADER BIO: Clare Owen worked as an actor and arts administrator in London before marrying a boat builder and moving to Cornwall. In 2008 she set up a theatre company specialising in improvising the real-life stories of audiences around the county, before going on to write and perform her own material. Her poetry and stories have been published in literary magazines and anthologies including Aspier, Mslexia, An Outbreak of Peace, Women Speak Volumes: An Anthology of Writing by Older Women, The Beautifully Mundane, and (in)visibilities. Her YA novel Zed and the Cormorants was published by Arachne Press in 2021 and won a Holyer an Gof award the following year. Creatures of a Brief Season will be published by Hermitage Press in September 2026 and is her first adult fiction novel.
Instagram/Facebook @clareowenwriter
Jackie Taylor is a Looe-based writer of poetry and short fiction.
COST: All our events are FREE. However, on the day, if you are able to make a donation, that will help fund the Festival for future years. Thank you.
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