Rachel Hewitt is a prize-winning author of creative non-fiction.
She writes feminist life lessons, informed by history and experience.
Rachel is a feminist writer of non-fiction.
She is fascinated (and horrified) by the psychology of patriarchy: how and why men abuse women, how men’s abuse shapes women’s beliefs and possibilities, and how women can be freed from male power. She is particularly interested in grief and widowhood, seen through a feminist lens; and in taboo aspects of complicated grief. She is passionate about the life-changing joys of running and outdoor adventure, especially for women, and especially as an aid to recovery after grief, trauma and abuse.
She draws on historical case studies, personal experience and contemporary cultural research to illuminate these patterns, and to show how feminist change can be brought about for individual women and for whole societies. She investigates different types of change, ranging from era-defining revolutions to new year’s resolutions, from political protest to acts of self-care such as running. As the Icelandic writer Kristin Helga Gunnarsdottir puts it, ‘If one creates small revolutions every day…then the world shifts, taking one along with it.’
Rachel writes on these subjects in her books, on her bestselling Substack newsletter, Small Revolutions, Every Day, and she hosts and tutors writing retreats and online courses.
More about Rachel…
Rachel has published four non-fiction books with major publishers. Her first book, the bestselling Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey (Granta, 2010), told the history of Britain’s national mapping agency for the very first time. Map of a Nation won the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award for Non-Fiction and was shortlisted for the Galaxy Non-Fiction Awards, the Scottish Book Awards, the Bristol Festival of Ideas Book Prize and BBC History Magazine‘s Book Prize.
Her second book, A Revolution of Feeling: The Decade that Forged the Modern Mind (Granta, 2017), won a Gladstone’s Library Political Writing Residency and shows how modern ideas about emotion first emerged in the tumultuous 1790s.
Rachel’s third book, In Her Nature: How Women Break Boundaries in the Great Outdoors (Chatto, 2023), shines a light on female experiences of running, hiking and climbing, revealing the extraordinary history of women’s outdoor sport – and why it’s been forgotten. It was awarded the Eccles British Library Writer’s Award, and a Highly Commended award in the 2024 Charles Tyrwhitt Sports Book Awards, and was shortlisted for the British Society of Sport History’s literary prize.
The Last Bastion: The History of Women in Sport, 1984-2024 is Rachel’s most recent book, and was a private commission for the charity Women in Sport. Through the eyes of remarkable women who founded and ran that organisation, The Last Bastion traces the striking progress and infuriating obstacles that have been experienced by sportswomen over the last forty years.
She is currently working on When the Worst Happens: a series of free posts and videos designed to act as a guidebook to complicated grief, for those who are stuck on the hellish island of grief and for those who are supporting them.
She has a PhD in English Literature (London), as well as a BA and Master of Studies (both Oxford). She has worked at the universities of Oxford, Glamorgan, Queen Mary (London), and Newcastle. She is now a full-time writer and lives in North Yorkshire, where she runs across the Moors and the Wolds, and shepherds multiple children and animals.
