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The Cure for Sleep with Tanya Shadrick on Substack

Desire, time, longing, friendship, regret, faith, promises…

short true soul stories on themes from the book written by readers of
The Cure for Sleep

Season 1 | Season 2 | Season 3

With the approaching publication of my debut book in 2021, I decided to use my own season of visibility in the publishing world to open up a welcoming space on Substack for other late-starters to risk their words…

…and for several years something astonishing and deeply soulful happened in that space as a result. Across three seasons, I shared a series of free extracts from my memoir, asking readers to dare share their own short soul stories in return. And for the several hundred brave folk who submitted one or more? Every person received editorial feedback before seeing their work curated here on the book’s website.

All those stories entrusted to me are still showcased here – and it’s a wonderful archive to explore if you want to get a sense of the huge range of subjects, styles and voices that constellated around the prompts. Scroll down to see all of the themes and the responses to them.

While that project is now ended and all the original Substack posts hidden away, I hope you will still consider becoming a free subscriber over there. In a future season, this would likely be the place where I’ll offer another kind of collective creative experiment or long ongoing conversation. And if I do, I’d love the chance to welcome you there – as an old friend or a new one.

And in the meantime, do also feel free to find me on instagram. I appreciate every heartfelt reader message that reaches me there and I reply whenever I’m able to be online.

Season 3 (2023)

The Cure for Sleep Season Three Issue Seven - Open House: Use a room in your currrent house or a former home to tell us a story of your values, your habits: where you've lived, what you've lived for

The Cure for Sleep Season Three Issue Five - Impossible Objects

Season 2 (2022)

The Cure For Sleep: Gestures, Remembered

A woman's hand held open showing fingertips stained with coaldust.

Over this image is Tanya's Substack monthly themed writing prompt: Share a story of a gone loved one - their particular gestures or habits; what those mean to you...

The Cure For Sleep: Reading

A married couple reading side by side in bed: only their open books and their hands visible. The husband (left) is reading Tolkien; the wife (right) is reading the Letters of Ted Hughes. Over this image is Tanya's Substack monthly themed writing prompt: Scenes from our reading lives. What books (given, lent, lost, found, shared, annotated, more) - or memories of reading/being read to - are at the heart of our own stories?

Season 1 (2021)

The Cure for Sleep: Rebirth

A vintage magazine image of a woman's naked shoulder and cradled knee with a sun painted across them. Over this image is Tanya's Substack monthly themed writing prompt: Coming back from loss, shame or failure

The Cure for Sleep: Faith

Vintage magazine illustration of a uterus. Over this image is Tanya's Substack monthly themed writing prompt: Turning towards or away from belief, from belonging

“It could be enough, more than enough, to be a person occupied for the rest of my life by what might look to others only an idiotically simple gathering in of small and obscure moments: the collecting of stories from ordinary people like me.”
The Cure For Sleep

Contributors

From a community of several thousand active readers, more and more people took the next step of becoming writers for the project. And between them, they produced hundreds of stories. Here are the names of those who dared to share their soul stories…

Desire, time, longing, friendship, regret, faith, promises… short true soul stories on themes from the book written by readers ofThe Cure for Sleep