Credit: Derek Adams
CLARE BEST
Agent: Isobel Dixon
Assistant: Sian Ellis-Martin
Biography: Clare Best has worked as a bookbinder, a bookseller, an editor and a Creative Writing teacher.
Clare is a prize-winning poet and the author of four poetry publications: TREASURE GROUND (HappenStance, 2009); BREASTLESS (Pighog, 2011); EXCISIONS (Waterloo, 2011) –which was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize 2012 – and CELL (Frogmore 2015).
Her ongoing collaboration with artist Mary Anne Aytoun-Ellis, exploring hidden and mysterious bodies of water across the south country of England, culminated in SPRINGLINES (Little Toller Books, 2017).
She has presented her autobiographical project ‘Self-portrait without Breasts’ to audiences in Ireland, Canada and the USA as well as across the UK.
THE MISSING LIST, Clare’s prose memoir, was a finalist in the Mslexia Memoir Competition 2014.
Clare lives near the Suffolk coast with her husband and their whippet.
Praise for THE MISSING LIST:
‘A tapestry of time – brightly coloured, beautifully orchestrated, emotionally pure.’ – Andrew O’Hagan
Visit Clare’s website.
Follow Clare on X (previously Twitter).
THE MISSING LIST
Memoir, 206 pages
Linen Press, September 2018
A brave and beautiful memoir about one woman’s determined mission to expose family secrets and lies.
When Clare Best agrees to help her dying father record the story of his life, she knows time is running out. Will he finally reveal the truth before he dies?
Written as a patchwork of flashbacks, journal entries, descriptions of old ciné-film footage and idiosyncratic lists, the narrative has the drive and intrigue of a thriller.