About Open Mind Writing

Connie and Cathy offer Creative Writing courses to beginners and experienced writers. They work together to promote a unique and open environment. Students are able to explore new and exciting inspirational ideas. They believe that everyone has the potential to write, and enjoy nurturing other writers and watching them grow.

They both have degrees in Creative Writing from the University of Birmingham, and have been tutoring together for Warwick University and other organisations.

About Connie Ramsay Bott

I'm an American living in the UK. I'm in the unusual position of being an observer in both countries. This is a wonderful vantage point for me as a writer. My stories and poems take place in both countries, and the narrative voices range from young children to the elderly.

My novel Girl Without Skin will be published by Cinnamon Press next year. My poems and short stories have been published in a number of magazines and anthologies including The Rialto, Northwords Now, and Heartshoots in aid of Macmillan Cancer Research. My short story “Watching Robert Duffin” won the Baker Prize in 2013.

About Cathy Whittaker

What can I say about writing? It's a form of communication, a great way of meeting people, swapping ideas, and learning from others. We need to work with fellow writers to realise and develop our writing potential. I think discussion and feedback helps us to grow as writers.

My poetry has been widely published. Most recently I have had a sequence of fifteen autobiographical poems in Cinnamon Press' anthology Quintets. I was shortlisted for the 2015 Bridport Prize. My poems have appeared in Envoi, Interpreters House, Orbis, Ink Sweat and Tears, Mslexia and other magazines and anthologies. I was runner up for the Baker Prize in Poetry in 2014. I am a former Warwick Poet Laureate.