Writing and storytelling for social change
Wind&Bones is an innovative social enterprise dedicated to exploring the transformative power of writing and storytelling. Run by British writers Dr Hannah Stevens & Dr Will Buckingham, we are registered in Dundee, Scotland, and we work across the globe.
We work with organisations and individuals on projects that bring together writing, creativity and social change.
We take our name from the Medieval Chinese writer, Liu Xie, and his book the Wenxin diaolong (文心雕龍), or The Heart of Literature, the Carving of Dragons.
So cultivate the strength of the wind, and make the bone robust.
蔚彼風力，嚴此骨鯁。
For Liu, writing needs a balance of wind (feng 風) — vitality, life and spiritedness — and bone (gu 骨) — organisation and structure. We take this as good advice not just for writing, but also for social change, and for life.
Who we are
We are Dr Hannah Stevens and Dr Will Buckingham.
Hannah has a PhD in creative writing. She is an award-winning writer of fiction and non-fiction and has been published internationally. Her latest short story collection On the Bodies of Strangers was shortlisted for the W&A Working Class Writers’ Prize 2022.
Her book In their Absence (Roman Books 2021) is a collection of short stories about missing people, and those they leave behind. The collection was based on Hannah’s PhD research at the University of Leicester. The stories testify to the complexity and diversity of the reasons that lead to people going missing. In their Absence has been translated into Bulgarian.
Hannah has led projects for organisations including the BBC, the British Embassy, and Greenpeace.
Will has a PhD in philosophy and an MA in anthropology. His most recent book is Hello, Stranger: Stories of Connection in a Divided World (Granta 2021/2). Hello, Stranger was a BBC Radio4 Book of the Week. Will is the author of thirteen books, and has been translated into multiple languages, including French, Korean, Bulgarian, Finnish, German, Chinese and Persian. He was also content advisor and contributor to Dorling Kindersley’s globally-bestselling The Philosophy Book.
Will has been associate professor in Writing & Creativity at De Montfort University, visiting associate professor in the College of Literature and Journalism at Sichuan University, and is currently on the faculty of Parami University, Myanmar. He has run literature projects internationally.
What we offer
We work with organisations and individuals.
For organisations
We run projects exploring how writing and storytelling can deepen communication, build community, and bring about positive social change. Our project partners have included Greenpeace, British Embassy Sofia, Unboxed UK, the Goethe Institut, Mote Oo Education (Myanmar), GIY Ireland Ltd, the Premise Institute — and many more.
For individuals
We work with individuals to mentor them through their own writing projects. Are you a short story writer, struggling with a first collection? Are you an academic trying to make the difficult leap from academic to trade writing? Or are you wrestling a novel into shape? If the answer to any of these questions is “yes,” we can help you!
You can find out more on our mentoring page.
