Holly Winter-Hughes is a poet, facilitator and researcher passionate about using writing to express the stories held within our bodies. Her work explores embodiment, memory, trauma and resilience, drawing on her experiences and academic research to illuminate the unseen and unheard. Holly’s poetry has been commissioned by organisations including Apples & Snakes, Arvon and Poetry Pharmacy, and she has shared her work widely across the UK, performing for the BBC, Cheltenham Poetry Festival, Ledbury Poetry Festival, Satellite of Love and Raise the Bar.
A committed advocate for underrepresented voices, Holly is the founder and CEO of The Word Association CIC , which has published over 40 anthologies amplifying the work of marginalised communities under her leadership. She continues to facilitate therapeutic writing workshops for The Word Association, as well as for other organisations on a freelance basis. This includes school visits for National Poetry Day and judging Worcestershire Young Poet Laureate Competition each year. From January 2026 Holly will also provide regular embodied poetry workshops for the renowned Poetry Pharmacy.
Holly’s writing is widely published in journals such as Atrium, Clarion, Impossible Archetype, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Lapidus Magazine and Tears in the Fence. Her collection, How to Leave a Body came out in May 2025 through Verve. It was selected as Atrium’s featured collection for Summer 2025. Holly is also an editor for Clarion Poetry Magazine.
In 2025, Holly achieved distinction in an MSc in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes from Metanoia Institute, her dissertation focused on practitioner wellbeing and resilience. She is a member of LAPIDUS, the professional body for Writing for Wellbeing. She is currently a doctoral student at the University of Birmingham, exploring how an embodied approach to therapeutic writing can amplify the silent and unspoken across individual, communal and spatial contexts. Holly will be presenting two papers at The International Society for Folk Narrative Research 2026 Nature in Narrative Conference in Reykjavík.
Holly Winter-Hughes 