Specialisms: 

Non-fiction, narrative non-fiction, journalism, life writing.

​

Services offered: 

Three month mentoring.

​

About Kate: 

​

Kate Leaver is a journalist and author of The Friendship Cure, a manifesto on the importance of friendship in an era of loneliness. It is her first book and it is published in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and the United States.

 

She is available to mentor writers on their non-fiction work - the process of research, getting an agent, the publishing journey, writing the book, editing, doing interviews, coming up with ideas, choosing the right people to work with, communicating with experts, writing memoir, using humour, translating academic texts into relatable reading, proposal structure, pitching, discipline, publicity, media commentary, interviews, etc.

 

In her journalism work, Kate writes about mental health, women and pop culture for The Guardian, The Independent, The Evening Standard, Elle, Vogue, Refinery29 and Red. She is a regular commentator on TV and radio. 

​

​

The Friendship Cure:

​

Blurb: 

​

Our best friends, Twitter followers, gal-pals, bromances, Facebook friends, and long distance buddies define us in ways we rarely openly acknowledge. But as a society, we are simultaneously terrified of being alone and already desperately lonely. We move through life in packs and friendship circles and yet, in the most interconnected age, we are stuck in the greatest loneliness epidemic of our time. It's killing us, making us miserable and causing a public health crisis. Increasingly, we don’t just die alone; we die because we are alone.

What if meaningful friendships are the solution?Journalist Kate Leaver believes that friendship is the essential cure for the modern malaise of solitude, ill health, and anxiety and that, if we only treated camaraderie as a social priority, it could affect everything from our physical health and emotional well being. Her much-anticipated manifesto, The Friendship Cure, looks at what friendship means, how it can survive, why we need it, and what we can do to get the most from it. Why do some friendships last a lifetime, while others are only temporary? How do you “break up" with a toxic friend? How do you make friends as an adult? Can men and women really be platonic? What are the curative qualities of friendship, and how we can deploy friendship to actually live longer, better lives?

From behavioral scientists to besties, Kate draws upon the extraordinary research from academics, scientists, and psychotherapists, and stories from friends of friends, strangers from the Internet, and her “squad†? to get to the bottom of these and other facets of friendship.

For readers of Susan Cain’s Quiet and Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic, The Friendship Cure is a fascinating blend of accessible “smart thinking" investigative journalism, pop culture, and memoir for anyone trying to navigate this lonely world, written with the wit, charm, and bite of a fresh voice.

​

Reviews: 

'Kate's mixture of wild and stupendous imagination, emotional intelligence, and honest human approach in her writing strikes chords.' Gemma Cairney

 

'Witty, relatable, thought-provoking. If Jon Ronson and Marian Keyes morphed into one magic person and wrote a book, this book would be it.' Rosie Waterland, author of The Anti-Cool Girl

​

'So many of Kate's pieces get a huge response because they are so painfully and beautifully frank and yet so warm... and I find myself reflecting on them for a long time afterwards.' Emma Gannon, author of CtrlAltDelete and blogger at girllostincity.com

'Kate has a lightness of comedic touch and flair that most writers would kill for. I can always count on her to make the serious stuff funny and readable, and the actually funny stuff even funnier still.' -Zing Tsjeng, Broadly Editor

​

Read more about Kate's debut The Friendship Cure here >>

​

More resources: 

Website: kateleaver.com

Twitter: @kateileaver

​

​