Welcome to the finale episode of The Bibliotherapists! We couldn’t have asked for a better guest to close out Series 3.

This week we’re joined by writer, Anna Wharton. A Sunday Times bestselling author and long-time ghostwriter, Anna has spent decades working with words in all their glorious forms: journalism, memoir, fiction, and an award-winning Substack, White Ink, where writing craft meets feminism. Her own memoir is being published next year.

(She’s also an old friend of Toni’s from their ‘Fleet Street’ days).

Anna writes about (and for) strong women. She’s also raising one, as a single parent to a teenage daughter, and this conversation explores the delights and challenges of choosing writing as a career.

In this conversation Anna reflects on her journey from meeting crazy deadlines in tabloid newsrooms to learning to write solo, and slowly enough to uncover “the story beneath the story.”

We move into her current work; a memoir shaped by the discovery of her grandmother’s time in an asylum, and the wider conversation around autofiction and what we owe the reader when we tell our own stories.

“What I've enjoyed is this slow reveal and the redrafting of this memoir, finding the story beneath the story.”

* Anna Wharton

✨ IN THIS CONVERSATION

* Anna’s love of Deborah Levy, Annie Ernaux, and the books (plural) she loves to gift

* The case for “real life” magazine stories as excellent training material for writers

* Autofiction: where memoir ends and story begins, and why the line is blurrier than we think

* Modelling creativity to your kids (even if they absolutely hate books because of it)

* What Anna learned about the treatment of women in a 1970s psychiatric textbook that left us all speechless

📖 Anna’s Reading List

(and you can see ALL of our guests book picks so far at our Bookshop.org shop)

Written by Anna Wharton:

* The Imposter

* Somebody I Used to Know by Wendy Mitchell (ghostwritten by Anna Wharton)

Mentioned in our conversation

* Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

* Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen

* Things I Don’t Want to Know (part of a trilogy by Deborah Levy)

* The Years by Annie Ernaux

* Ghost Stories by Siri Hustvedt

* The Renovation by Kanan Orhan

About The Bibliotherapists

The Bibliotherapists is hosted by Tanya Lynch therapeutic journalling coach and founder of Ease Retreats and Toni Jones founder of The Shelf Help Club.

Each week, we speak to a writer or creative about:

* The books that shaped them

* How reading supports their wellbeing

* Their writing practice and reading habits

* How they use Substack as part of their creative ecosystem

We believe words heal. And we love asking other word nerds questions that get beneath the surface (as well as taking a tour through their book shelves).

This is the last episode of Series 3. But there’s a whole archive to explore at The Bibliotherapists home page.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliotherapists.substack.com

Folgen-ID: 1000765164670

GUID: substack:post:195972239

Erscheinungs­datum: 1.5.2026, 09:00:00