Holly Winter-Hughes is a poet, creative writing educator and researcher whose work explores the intersections of embodiment, memory, voice, silence and resilience. Passionate about the capacity of writing to express stories held within our bodies, her creative and academic practice brings together poetry, experimental writing, embodied approaches to storytelling and interdisciplinary research.
Holly has extensive experience in creative writing education, spanning further and higher education, community learning and professional creative practice. Her teaching and facilitation work includes developing and delivering creative writing workshops, masterclasses and programmes for organisations including Arvon and Poetry Pharmacy. She has also delivered school visits for National Poetry Day, judged the Worcestershire Young Poet Laureate competition and provides regular embodied poetry workshops. Her educational practice is informed by a commitment to inclusive approaches to creative writing that support diverse voices and enable writers at different stages of their creative journeys to develop their work.
Holly is the founder and CEO of The Word Association CIC, established in 2018, which has published more than 40 anthologies amplifying the work of marginalised communities. Through this work, she has developed extensive experience in creative programme development, literary publishing, facilitation, funding and community engagement.
As a Research Associate at the University of Birmingham, Holly continues to contribute to the interdisciplinary 8 Hills ArtWays project, a collaboration with the National Trust exploring creative practice, landscape, heritage and community engagement. She is also a doctoral researcher in Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham, where her research explores experimental poetic witnessing, embodiment, silence and the ways in which bodies, buildings and other inhuman narrators can give expression to individual, communal and spatial experience. Her research brings creative practice into conversation with narrative studies, phenomenology, folklore and embodied approaches to writing.
Holly holds an MSc in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes from Metanoia Institute, awarded with Distinction in 2025. Her dissertation explored practitioner wellbeing and resilience through embodiment, focusing and metaphor. She regularly presents her research nationally and internationally across creative writing, therapeutic writing, folklore, narrative studies and interdisciplinary research. Recent contributions include two papers and convening a panel at the International Society for Folk Narrative Research’s 2026 conference in Reykjavík, and a workshop on somatics and embodied practice at the 3rd European Biblio/Poetry Therapy Conference.
Alongside her poetry, Holly has a professional background in journalism and non-fiction writing, having written across travel, fashion, music and motoring, and authored a series of non-fiction books for Green Books. Her poetry has been commissioned by organisations including Apples & Snakes, and performed widely across the UK, including for the BBC, Cheltenham Poetry Festival, Ledbury Poetry Festival, Satellite of Love and Raise the Bar. Her writing is published in journals including Atrium, Clarion, Impossible Archetype, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Lapidus Magazine and Tears in the Fence, with further work forthcoming in Under the Radar. Her debut collection, How to Leave a Body (Verve, 2025), was selected as Atrium’s featured collection for Summer 2025. She is an editor for Clarion Poetry Magazine and a member of LAPIDUS International, the professional association for Writing for Wellbeing and the International Society for Folk Narrative Research.
