Welcome to Exposure...

...where I'm tracking the process of publishing a memoir

Hi, I’m Kate. I’ve written a memoir, provisionally called ‘Beyond The Mountain’, which is due to be published by Chatto & Windus in Jan/Feb 2027. (Chatto & Windus is a Penguin Random House imprint in the UK.) The memoir covers eight years of my life, and is about ‘grief, collapse, recovery and big mountains’. It came second in the Bridport Memoir Award in March 2025, and if you’re interested you can read an extract of it here.

The topic, though, isn’t relevant to what I’m doing here.

Instead, in this space, I want to track the process of this next year in the run up to publication.

Partly that’s because the mechanics of the process fascinate me. I’ve had a book published before, but by a small press not a Big 4 imprint, and the differences are - it turns out - manifold. I expect my fascination with the process only to grow.

Partly it’s that this year is likely to be life-changing for me. I say that not in expectation of enormous book sales (though obviously that would be nice, and I’ll be doing my best to achieve it), but instead because I’ll be putting a big chunk of myself out into the world (as memoir requires), and that will inevitably cause me psychological shifts. I’d like to note those down as I go, so that I remember what it was like.

Partly I want to share with other people what this is like. Because it’s interesting, and where I’m interested in something I generally want to communicate it. Also because many people would like to publish their memoir with a big publisher, and if that’s you then maybe what I write will be helpful.

Also, many books and essays are dedicated to the writing of memoir. Much less space is given to what it’s like to publish it. (Editing is also a topic that is under-described, to my mind.) So I hope I can in some way fill a gap.

Anyway - if you’re interested, do follow along, comment, ask questions. At worst, I’m writing a diary for the benefit of my future self. At best, other people may get something out of it as well.

Note: these posts will be mostly aimed at writers. If you’re interested more broadly in the topics covered in my memoir, you’re probably better off with my wider newsletter, Beyond The Mountain.

That’s all for now. I’ll be back in the next few days with some thoughts on how I’ve got to here, and how the editing is going.

All best,

Kate