She lived in the East End of London for several years, before moving to Oxford where she was a fellow of Oxford Brookes University and served as City Poet.[4] She is Writer in Residence for Sanctuary Arts[5] at Mansfield College, Oxford.
In 2021 she wrote an essay about the deaths of both her parents from COVID-19.[6]
Teaching
Clanchy qualified as a teacher in 1989 and has taught since in several different institutions. Her memoir of her teaching experience,Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me won the Orwell Prize for Political Writing in 2020.[7]
From 2009-2019 she combined employment as a teacher and a role as Writer in Residence at Oxford Spires Academy, a multicultural comprehensive school. Noted students included Mukahang Limbu,[8] Shukria Rezaei,[9] and Amineh Abou Kerech.[10] In 2018 she edited an anthology of poems written by her students, England: Poems from a School, which was widely reviewed.[11][12] Over the lockdown period of 2020 Clanchy met on Zoom with her students and published their poems on Twitter where they became popular.[13][14] In 2021 she published a self-help guide to writing poetry, How to Grow Your Own Poem.
Literary work
Clanchy won an Eric Gregory Award in 1995.[15] She published three poetry collections between 1996 and 2004. They won a Forward Prize,[16] the Scottish First Book of the Year (then Saltire Prize) two Scottish Arts Council Book Awards, and a Somerset Maugham Award.[17] In 2008, she moved into non fiction with a memoir about her relationship with her Kosovan neighbour. What is She Doing Here? This was republished as Antigona and Me and won the Writers Guild Award.[18]
In 2009 she won both the VS Pritchett and BBC National Short Story Award.[19] This was followed by a novel, Meeting the English,[20] which was shortlisted for the Costa Prize, and a collection of short stories, The Not Dead and the Saved.[21]
Clanchy has written and adapted for BBC Radio since 2001 with 12 plays and serials produced, notably Hester, A Little Princess,[22] which starred Adjoa Andoh and Enduring Love. In 2015 her broadcast anthology of her pupils' work, We Are Writing a Poem About Home,[23] was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award.[24] In 2018 she was awarded a Cholmondeley Award.[25] Other work includes:
Our Cat Henry Comes to the Swings. illustrated Jemima Bird. Oxford University Press. 2005. ISBN978-0-19-272557-8.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
In 2021, Clanchy posted on Twitter encouraging followers to report a Goodreads review of Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, stating that they had "made up a racist quote and said it was in my book".[26] In a response published in The Guardian, Monisha Rajesh argued that although the exact quotes in question were not present, similar offensive stereotypes were present throughout the book.[27]
Clanchy was criticised by other authors, including Chimene Suleyman, Monisha Rajesh and Sunny Singh, who received large amounts of abuse in the following months.[28][27][29] An open letter signed by over 950 people from the publishing industry condemned the targeted harassment.[30] Clanchy's publishers, Picador, an imprint of Macmillan Publishing, issued three statements of apology in August 2021 and stated that the books would be rewritten.[27][26] Further statements of apology were made following an interview[31] with Philip Gwyn Jones, Publisher of Picador, in the Daily Telegraph in December 2021.[32]
Clanchy was defended in articles by Sonia Sodha, who stated that 'the strand of anti-racist thinking that is obsessed with the blame and shame all white people should bear for structural discrimination is (so) corrosive to common cause and understanding'[33] and by Clive Davis,[34]Tomiwa Owolade,[35] Shukria Rezaei,[36]Carmen Callil[37]Amanda Craig and Philip Pullman. A group of her former students wrote that they had experienced no safeguarding issues and were 'disempowered and distressed' by the critics' allegations.[38]
In December 2021, Clanchy published an article in Prospect magazine on the personal impact of public cancellation.[39] Consequently, her publisher Picador announced they would no longer publish her books.[29] In an interview for UnHerd, Clanchy said that the apology put out by Pan Macmillan had been made "over her head" and without consulting her.[40] She subsequently wrote an article on sensitivity readers,[41] which continued to be discussed in the following years.[42][43][44][45] especially in the context of the Roald Dahl revision controversy. Clanchy is now published by Swift Press.[46]
^Vegard Hagesæther, Per (23 April 2023). "Publishing's Maligned Helpers". www.aftenposten.no (in Norwegian Bokmål). AftenP{osten. Retrieved 22 November 2023.
