Nottingham is famous for its rebel writers but one local writer and illustrator pair wondered what would happen if they remixed well known literary works into seventy-five word flash fictions.
Enter Clare Harvey and Hannah Sawtell.
Clare Harvey is an acclaimed historical fiction author and doctoral candidate. A chance discovery that her mother-in-law served in the British Army during WW2 set in train a fascination with writing about the overlooked stories of wartime women. The title of her PhD is ‘Co-authoring with Forgotten Voices’ and her research considers how text from old memoirs and diaries can be repurposed into authentic new biographical fiction.
Hannah Sawtell is a Freelance Illustrator and Educator, working at Nottingham Trent University alongside regional museums, schools and community settings. Commissioned projects have included working with The National Justice Museum, The National Trust and Nottingham Castle celebrating History, Heritage and Locality. Since completing a Masters degree in Children’s Book Illustration at Cambridge School of Art, Hannah has begun to explore Visual Storytelling in her work, alongside documenting her surroundings through regular sketchbook practice.
How did the project begin?
Clare and Hannah met whilst working together as writer and artist facilitators on a co-creation project with vulnerable adults in Newark a while back. They realised that when they worked together, the result was often more than the sum of the creative parts, if that makes sense, and if this was true for socially engaged project work, then it might also be true for their individual creative practice.
Using remix (sampling from existing text and ‘upcycling’ it) as a way of writing was a methodology that Clare has been developing as part of her PhD research, and Hannah offered to illustrate some of her remix-writing. At the time Clare happened to be sampling text from DH Lawrence’s The Rainbow (in part because she was working on remix-writing the author’s work for another socially-engaged writing project with Inspire Libraries: I Am A Writer), so it made sense to begin with the same novel.
How does the process work?
Clare begins by selecting a sample at random from the novel. She literally closes her eyes, opens the book, and pokes her finger at whatever page falls open. The words she lands on are the words she uses (usually, occasionally she’ll give herself another go, if the random sample is totally bonkers and unusable!). She allows herself to sample up to seven words, as they appear in the original text. This handful of words constitutes the writing prompt. She writes them down in her notebook, and then keeps writing for a twenty to thirty-minute free write, writing longhand, not stopping to edit or analyse the writing.
After half an hour or so, a character, situation or event will have begun to emerge. Clare then condenses what she’s discovered through free writing into a seventy-five word flash fiction, keeping the original six-or-seven word sample as the opening text. Clare uses the Paragraph Planet format (Paragraph Planet publishes a seventy-five word flash fiction every day, and many of Clare’s pieces have already been published on their site) to help her craft her flash fiction into exactly 75 words, no more, no less. The writing process takes less than an hour in total. Clare then emails the flash fiction to Hannah.
Hannah reads the 75 words that Clare has sent her, allowing time to subconsciously digest the imagery that the text evokes. For this reason, Hannah doesn’t necessarily start artwork immediately. Once visual ideas begin to formulate, Hannah draws quick pencil thumbnail responses with the aim of capturing the essence of an idea extracting some but not all elements of the text, focussing on simple shapes and composition. These sketches are used as rough roadmaps or guides for artwork. One rewarding element of this project has been to respond to Clare’s written visual evocations, using materials and processes that encourage looseness and lightness of touch. Hannah has always enjoyed visually exploring experimenting with mark making, contrasting messy brushstrokes with clean edges achieved through combining layers of paper stencils and acrylic paints.
Why Lawrence and why 2025?
September 2025 marks the 145th birthday of Lawrence, one of Nottingham’s original rebel writers.
Sampling text from Lawrence to remix into new creative outputs feels like the perfect way to celebrate this important cultural milestone. Nottinghamshire has long been a bubbling pot of creativity, let’s keep stirring the pot!
Clare Harvey
“I love being a part of Nottingham’s creative community, supporting and learning from each other’s endeavours. DH Lawrence’s legacy is something for the people of Nottingham to be proud of, and the opportunity to be connected in some way is something to be relished.”
Hannah Sawtell
The pair have plans to continue to remix our rebel writers and they publish a flash fiction with its beautiful illustration every Friday on their Instagram account – demonstrating how literature has the ability to continue to inspire us and new creative projects.