The Book Forge Follow non-fiction author Milli Hill through the creative process

This week I’m thinking about women’s relationship with their own bodies, and I wanted to share with you some recordings I made last summer when I was commissioned to write an article about Nudefest. Nudefest is the UK’s largest naturist festival, and the women I spoke to on that hot day in July had so much insight into their relationship with their bodies that I’ve asked their permission to share our conversations here. In the first, I met Martha Vickery, age 25, and from Somerset, and in the second, Meleasha Carbado, 28, from Birmingham.
The insights of Martha and Meleasha didn’t make it into the final article I wrote about Nudefest, but they felt too important and insightful not to share.
“Naturism made me realise that my body is amazing just as it is, because without this body I wouldn’t get to hug people that I love, or eat wonderful food, or sing, or feel the sunshine on my skin, so instead of spending all this time and energy hating my body, shouldn’t I give it a bit of what it needs? Shouldn’t I move it a bit more and feed it a bit more of the things that it likes, doesn’t it deserve that?”
Thanks very much to Martha, Meleasha and Andrew at Nudefest for allowing me to share the interviews and images. You can find out more about Nudefest and British Naturism here:
https://shop.bn.org.uk/pages/nudefest
Top image is Meleasha, next image shows Martha and friends around the piano in the Magic Teapot.
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This week in The Book Forge I’m talking to author, Sunday Times bestselling ghost writer, and fellow substacker Anna Wharton. Anna and I have connected over our similar substacks – in hers, The Book Room, you can follow her progress as she sets up a ‘real life’ book shop. We decided to have a chat about the publishing industry, the money involved for both authors and retailers, and what needs to change to make it not just fair, but viable.
What followed was a really consciousness-shifting discussion about what actually matters in life, and how our shopping habits can not only reflect what we value - but also keep what we value alive.
As Anna puts it during our discussion:
“If you are willing to acknowledge the time and the effort and the craft that has gone into a book and pay full price for it, you are actually contributing to this eco-system that not only keeps books being published by publishers, it keeps independent shops there, and it keeps writers writing. Customers choosing to do that is quite a big act that they’re not even aware of.”
Subscribe to Anna’s substack The Book Room
Browse and shop for books at her website The Book Room

We mentioned:
My recent substack on author earnings
Anna’s recent substack on her worst ever trading day
Choke Point Capitalism
When I Hit You by Meena Kandasamy
ALCS survey
The Imposter by Anna Wharton
How to resist Amazon and why by Danny Kane




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This week it’s Anti-Bullying week, and in the Book Forge I’ve been thinking about the experience of being bullied as an adult, sharing my own thoughts about this and also a wonderful guest post from dancer and choreographer Rosie Kay. Rosie and I connected over our shared experience of being pilloried for sticking up for the reality of biological sex and women’s sex based rights. In this episode we talk a bit more about what happened to us, and our thoughts on why women are being attacked in this way and how we can survive it.
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Stonewall podcast




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Well folks I’ve bitten the bullet and created this very first episode of The Book Forge - the podcast! As I speak to different people as part of my research for the book, I’ll be uploading our chats here as podcast episodes. These might be women’s health experts, book authors, or perhaps people working in publishing for those of you who want to know more about the process of getting your words in print. If you have any suggestions of people you’d like me to speak to or topics you are curious about, let me know in the comments! And I definitely don’t quite know what I’m doing with podcasts yet (but decided if I waited for that to happen, I’d never get started!), so any general feedback is also welcomed.
This week I spoke to the wonderful Claire Baker, menstrual coach, founder of Cycle Coach School and author of ‘50 things you need to know about periods’. You can find out more about Claire via her website.
And I’ve actually only gone and bloody well written some actual words for the book this week. Make sure you are subscribed to catch my writer’s diary later this week, when I’ll be sharing with you some of the amazing research rabbit holes I’ve been down, from Aristotle to the number 13 to the Venus of Laussel to the ‘revolting power’ of menstrual blood. But for now, I hope you enjoy this fascinating chat with Claire.




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