About me

I write, and work as an editor, writing tutor and mentor. I have worked as a senior arts administrator in the literature and new writing sectors in the UK and the US. Organisations I have worked for as an employee and on a free-lance basis include: the University of East Anglia, the National Centre for Writing, LiteratureWorks, the Arts Council, the Arvon Foundation,  the BBC, Manhattan Theatre Club, Channel Four, Self (Condé Nast), among others. I have written drama, short stories, novels, blogs and magazine features. I have designed and run creative writing workshops. I have an MA from the  University of East Anglia (Norwich) in ‘Writing the Modern World, 20th C Fiction Studies.’
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Currently, I work as an editor for Untold Narratives, an initiative to develop the writing of those marginalised by community or conflict.
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I also offer mentoring servies through the National Centre for Writing.
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I  have established and sat on boards of not-for-profit organisations.

I am an accredited coach for writers through a training programme developed by Relational Dynamics Coaching and run by the National Organisation for Writers in Education (NAWE) in partnership with the Arvon Foundation.

Portrait by Philip Hartley

My Recent Work

A Perfect Mother - A Novel

“A Perfect Mother is a highly ambitious novel of ideas and a powerfully involving drama.’ - Derek Johns, author of Ariel: a literary life of Jan Morris

A bracing, hypnotic story of mid-life crisis about the complexities of love, relationship and legacy.

During a visit to Trieste in Northern Italy to research his long lost great-grandfather, Jacob meets Charlotte and Jane, and the three are forced to confront their individual and shared histories. Their sense of themselves is challenged and they must piece together a future none of them saw coming.

‘Ms Skala conveys the shadowed charm of these story-haunted stones. Her Trieste is never an abstraction, but it becomes a potent metaphor for the mask of beauty that violence may wear.’ - The Economist

My next novel, The First of All Pleasures, is a historical fiction set in 18th C Paris.

Literary Agent: Isabel Brittain

Start your journey

Please get in touch if you’d like to discuss your project
or to start your mentorship journey

katriskala@gmail.com