From London to Wyoming: Building Community for Aspiring Writers with Francesca King

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Welcome to Winds of Change. I am your host, Emy Di Grappa. Winds of Change is brought to you by Wyoming Humanities Council. In this podcast, we focus on the history, people and places of Wyoming. And today my special guest is Francesca King.         

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Francesca is the founder of Footnote literary consultancy providing editing and assessment services for fiction writers. She is a winner of the 2024 Wyoming Innovation Partnership Arts Investing in Wyoming’s Creative Economy. Welcome, Francesca. Hi, Emy. Thank you so much for having me.         

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Absolutely. From what I understand from reading your bio, did you grow up in London? I did grow up in London, yes. I spent at least 22 years there where I got my master’s degree in creative writing. And then I decided I’d like to continue my education in creative writing.         

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So I flew to Wyoming and embarked on their fiction program in the MFA program at the University of Wyoming. Wow. So how did you learn about Wyoming? So actually it was one of my friends in my master’s degree in London. She told me about these magical programs called MFA programs that the US offered and would pay for provided you offered something back in terms of teaching commitment.         

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So for me, I was a graduate assistant teaching English 10. I’d never heard of them before in England. I don’t think these things really exist. And so she told me about it and then I looked into some fully funded opportunities, realized that Wyoming looked like one of the most amazing places on earth. The website homepage of the university is just covered in beautiful like snowy range mountains and just looked so different from London that I was very keen to apply.         

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So that’s how I found out I hadn’t even heard of Wyoming before I started looking into these programs. Right. That’s why I was wondering why. Why Wyoming? How did you find out about Wyoming?         

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So that’s really interesting. And so you came to Wyoming and. But you already had your degree in fiction writing, correct? In creative writing. So I had a.         

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So the way they do it in England, they do a one year master’s degree in creative writing. So I had that and I still felt like I could benefit. I mean, it was a great experience. I really enjoyed my time in the University of London program. But I felt like I could do with another couple of years of developing my craft.         

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I wasn’t really ready to enter into the workforce where I still felt like I had a lot to learn. And so that’s why I was very keen to embark on the MFA. Why did you choose a career in creative writing? How did that become your passion and who has been your inspiration? I think I’ve had many inspirations over the years.         

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The first time I really felt like creative writing was something I could pursue as more than just a hobby was when I was 14 years old. And my English teacher at the time gave us all these compositions, notebooks, she called them our free writing books. And she really advised us or encouraged us to spend one homework session per week just writing creatively in these notebooks. And it wasn’t for a grade. It was simply just to really try and engage with the creative side of our brain that often is overlooked when we’re doing very strict DCSE programs and things like that.         

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So she was really the first person who got me thinking that actually creative writing was something of value. I mean, she was valuing it. She was saying that a whole homework session should be dedicated to exploring creatively the ideas that we had. So I would say was probably the first person that really made me believe in creative writing. And then from there.         

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I’ve had a series of amazing teachers over the years and really excellent teachers in the University of London program as well. Anna Whitwam and then the late Brad Watson, who was my. One of my thesis advisors when I was in the University of Wyoming. Alison Hagee as well. Oh, interesting.         

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So how would you describe your style of writing, of creative writing? So I’m predominantly a fiction writer. So I work all the time on writing novels. That’s my one focus. I mean, it changed over the years.         

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I mean, I started with poetry, and I do think a lot of these early influences and the poets that I was engaging with as a younger writer has contributed to the way I approach language and playing around with language now. Yes, predominantly a fiction writer and working towards writing a novel. Okay, so what kind of fiction? So I write psychological fiction. So the.         

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The novel I’m writing right now, it’s entitled the Footnote. It’s for an adult audience. It’s about taking lots of experiences from my own life, but about a. A youngish researcher, slash adjunct who works at a university in Colorado. And she is trying to make a name for herself, and she ends up applying for a residency that takes place on a ship that’s going to embark into the Arctic following the path of the 1845 Franklin Expedition that got lost in the Arctic.         

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And so she embarks on this journey to prove herself and to discover some great historical thing that is going to change the trajectory of her life. But on board, she realizes that there are people who are also in the same position as her and would quite like to, you know, there’s a Lot of conversation about who owns an idea, thinking about issues of academic plagiarism. So, yeah, and the idea about the Arctic ship all stemmed from an Arctic Circle residency that I went on a few years ago, which did take place in the Arctic on a ship. So I’ve been wanting for a very long time to write a book that is actually situated in a very similar environment. That’s so interesting.         

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Wow. Exciting. I’m excited to learn more about that. So are you done with this, with this current novel, or are you still working on it? I’m still working on it right now.         

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I think I’m on draft three. Probably have to get to draft five before I feel ready to send it out on submission. But I’m working with my agent in London to really make sure that this is going to be the one that ends up hopefully getting sold when we put it on submission. Did you come to a conclusion on who owns an idea? Who owns an idea?         

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I don’t know. So in. In the book, the idea is that the researcher, my protagonist, discovers what she believes is a menstrual cup that was found on the original Franklin expedition. And if she can prove that it really was a menstrual cup, this would change history, because we all believe that the Franklin expedition only had men aboard, but it wasn’t unheard of for women to sometimes sneak on board the ship, ships disguised as men. And so the idea there is like, well, you know, she wasn’t the one who excavated the menstrual cup.         

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She just saw a picture of it on the archaeologist’s blog. But if she’s the one who knows it’s the menstrual cup, does she own that idea? Does the archaeologist own the idea? So I was thinking about academic honesty, who owns an idea, plagiarism, all of that kind of thing. Especially in light of all the AI conversations that we’re having in my teaching work that I’m doing at the university right now, so.         

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Interesting. Yes. And AI does play a huge part in that. It must be a really interesting time to be in the university and teaching and, you know, really having to watch out for students, you know, not allowing them to turn in papers that are written by AI. Yeah, I mean, it’s something that we’ve been talking about for years.         

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I don’t think anybody has sort of come to a consensus about what to do. The university’s done good work, actually headed up in a big part by Rick Fisher, and they’ve done a lot of work to think about how we can add in statements in our syllabus about what constitutes good AI usage versus very bad AI usage. But these are still conversations that are happening across campus every semester. Yeah, it’s. It’s hard.         

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I feel like it’s so much more nuanced than just like, AI is bad or AI is good. But, yeah, trying to get to that state where we can sort of show students how to use AI in a very ethical way. It’s hard because then we have to know how to be able to talk about it and interact with it ethically to be able to teach students how to do it themselves. Yeah, it’s super interesting. I’m really excited to talk about the.         

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You’re the founder of the Footnote literary consultancy. That’s right. So talk about that. What is it? What do you do?         

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And what kind of drove you to create this consultancy? Okay, so Footnote Literary Consultancy is a new business that helps writers to accelerate their journey to publication through professional editing services, including personalized manuscript assessment and consulting. So through my research, when I was compiling my letter of intent for the grant, I understood that Footnote is Wyoming’s first professional literary consultancy. And it’s a direct response to four challenges which we saw present in the state. So I can go through those four challenges.         

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Go ahead. Okay, cool. So, firstly, there is no literary consultancy in Wyoming, though there is a high demand for this service. So I was speaking to some of the MFA faculty at the university and they’re saying that oftentimes they feel bad because people reach out to them and ask for their help, and they’re simply too busy, like with their own writing and their teaching to be able to offer the kind of help that these writers are seeking. And so they often are sending them to out of state book doctors.         

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And so, yeah, we’re just seeing there is a demand in the state for this kind of thing. And a lot of the time this business and this help is sort of being redirected, like, outside of the state. I’m just trying to keep it in the state. So that was the first challenge I could see. The second challenge was that I was speaking to a number of really awesome writing groups across Wyoming, and they told me that they’re sometimes overwhelmed by inadequate options when they’re thinking about reaching out to an editor.         

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So we don’t have a centralized directory, which is something I would love to try and do as a representative of Footnote, though we do have directories which have been headed up by individual arts organizations across Wyoming. And so Wyoming writing groups are reporting instances of individuals Masquerading as experienced editors who are ill equipped to help writers. So I even just searched into Google, like Wyoming Literary Consultancy, and it’s yielding very impersonal results for like New York based farms which are saying like, hey, if you’re a writer in Wyoming, we can help. And so I just felt like it might be better to have somebody who’s in the state who has credentials from the University of Wyoming, who really cares about writers in Wyoming, actually offering help to writers in Wyoming. Oh, that’s excellent.         

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Yeah, I mean, and then there’s the third and the fourth. So my third challenge that I saw was that Wyoming is geographically quite isolated from the leading coastal entities and international publishing hubs. So I think many writers sometimes mistakenly believe that writing is quite a solitary activity and neglect sometimes the importance of community, which stalls their progress. I just think Wyoming’s rural nature often isolates writers from one another. And so my hope with Footnote is that in addition to these editorial services that I can offer, it would also serve as a place where writers can connect and form community.         

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We have writing groups around the state. I just think it would be so nice if we could try and connect these writing groups in just different ways. And then lastly, the last challenge that I identified was that creative writing education is expensive and often pretty inaccessible. Literary conferences are expensive to attend and MFA programs are cost prohibitive sometimes, and they often do require relocation. So again, I’m hoping that through Footnote I can offer free resources.         

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I’ve already started building my website and including some of these free resources and also other resources like things about how to pitch to agents, how to create a writing sample that is going to look good in MFA applications. Oh my gosh, that’s. That’s amazing that you discovered that you put your mind around the challenges of living in Wyoming and living in an isolated state and being able to provide a resource for people that. That’s incredible. I have to.         

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I was thinking as you were talking, I was like, I wonder if it’s so old fashioned and maybe it’s not because I haven’t been at the university for a while. What is a footnote? What is a footnote? Yeah, what is a footnote? So a footnote is kind of like an addendum, like maybe an additional thought that you might include at the bottom of a page, potentially sort of like additional information that maybe doesn’t need to be included in the main body of an argument or a text.         

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And it can be, or an additional resource if you wanted to check out something else. Sort of like a side thought or a side note. I just wanted to put that out there because I know that that was always a requirement when we were writing papers in college. And I’m always curious to see how things like that have changed with, you know, technology and like, you know, you were talking about AI and you know, how, how that has any of that changed? When you turn in a paper, do you always.         

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Are you always providing the references of your research? I think that’s the aim is definitely to have informed sources. When we’re writing, like I teach freshman composition, and so we’re often talking about the importance of being able to evaluate sources and use sources to form your opinions and not just have an opinion and then try and find sources to back it up. So that’s the, that’s the point of the freshman composition class is to. That I’m teaching right now.         

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Yeah, so I would say definitely sources are more important than ever these days, especially with AI telling you things. If you plug something into AI, it says so and so source says this, and then you cross check it on Google Scholar or wherever you’re looking, and that source doesn’t exist. So it just plucks things up. It makes things up out of thin air sometimes. So definitely at the university, we’re teaching students not to trust AI at face value and to really be thinking and evaluating.         

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I think just nowadays as well with the political landscape, it’s just more important than ever to be able to understand how to look at sources and know what the sources want you to believe. Like, why are they saying this? I’m not taking everything at face value. So. Yeah, so that, that’s why I was really interested that you named your consultancy Footnote Literary Consultancy.         

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And so how are people finding out about you? How are they learning about your services? Because, you know, there are different book festivals and literary conferences across Miami. So it would be great that people learn that there is a resource in. Our state that is definitely my ambition for this year is to reach out to the writing groups, the literary conferences, and to really see what I can do to help.         

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I have had amazing interactions already, like simply through the grant, when I was doing my market research with many of these communities and they were so generous, saying that they would love to know, have me come in and talk to their groups about certain aspects of fiction writing and coming to the literary festivals and maybe making an appearance there. So they were so generous and very, very kind to give me so much time when I was putting together my application for the grant. Oh my gosh. That’s there’s so many needed services like that. And a lot of times, yeah, you do look outside of the state.         

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And we always, you know, being at the Wyoming Humanities Council, we always try and focus within our state for everything we do in terms of, you know, even working with a graphic design firm or any of those kinds of things. It’s really important that we, you know, shop local, basically. So basically, as you develop your consultancy service, how do you fund yourself? Is its fee based, right? Yes, it’s a fee-based service.         

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As part of the grant, I posed the possibility of going to different writing groups and communities and festivals across Wyoming and offering kind of free introductory workshops just to kind of let people know who I am. I just, I feel very aware that I don’t want to be presenting myself as some kind of like, person who can sweep in and then tell everybody, like, how to write a book. Like, I’m not bad at all. I want everybody to understand that I’m just, I am part of this community. I’m not speaking from like a place above this community.         

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And I want them to realize that first and foremost, I’m a writer, I’m a reader. I am also working on my craft. And I want people to understand that, like, I’m just one of them. I’m part of this community. I’m not trying to, like, infiltrate my way in.         

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I get that. Yeah, that’s smart and good for you. Well, who do you trust in your world, in your writing? How do you find an editor? I mean, what if you find an editor and you say you’ve written a book and you want to put it out there and you want to find an editor and they come back to you and let’s say you’re just like oil and vinegar.         

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Like, you don’t see, you don’t agree with what they’re saying about your writing? I mean, that happens often. This is why I’m saying, like, the value of finding your community and the people that you can trust to give you feedback that resonates with you is so invaluable. I work with two other writers, my writing partners, Caitlin and Laura, and we just meet over Zoom. We met when Catapult was still running that online classes and since have been disbanded.         

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But we’ve kept up the writing group and the critiques of each other’s manuscripts, and without their feedback, I could not do what I’m doing right now. Like, I feel like it’s so important to have that. And I’ve worked with an editor as well. So Just a few months ago, I hired somebody from a firm in England to help me with my own, like, developmental process of my novel. I thought she was absolutely fantastic.         

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And again, but it is a scary thing, you know, I’m committing a lot of money to working with somebody I’m not 100% sure is going to be amazing. You just got to kind of. I don’t know. I. We had that initial consultation, which is what I’m offering in my consultancy as well, and I really seemed to be vibing with her, and she seemed to be understanding my goals for the novel.         

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So I just had a very good feeling that we would work out. And luckily that was correct and I had a really good experience with her. And I just feel like I would like to offer that kind of experience to other people as well. Within Wyoming, what do you tell people? How do you describe Wyoming when you talk to your family and friends in London?         

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Well, I call it my home now, which can sometimes upset my family a little bit, who are all still in England and around London. And I think would like me to think of London as home. But I’m very established here. I have a job. I love friends, I love here, a husband, two cats at home, home.         

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So I feel very much like Wyoming is just home now. But how do you describe it? What is it like when. Because I think it is quite unusual that we live in a state that has such a small population, less than 600,000 people, and that’s probably hard for people in London to imagine. Yeah, it might be hard.         

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I mean, the way I describe it to my family is very much like it’s idyllic, honestly. Like, I mean, it’s so nice to have the space and the time to think the short commute to work. It just feels like I’ve landed in a very lovely pocket of the United States, and I’m very grateful to have found this place. I think. Yeah, it’s hard for them to sort of understand, like, going from the culture of, you know, you got to go to every new theater show that comes out and every new experience in London.         

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And, like, there’s a lot. There’s a big subculture of fomo, you know, like, fear of missing out. But I don’t really feel that anymore. I feel like it’s allowed me to take a step back, like, living here and just sort of reevaluate, like, what do I actually want to spend my time on. And for me, that was building this business, this was working on my novel, contributing at the university.         

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So I feel like it has a. Like living here. And the way I describe it to people is that it’s a place that allows you to really slow down, reevaluate what’s important. Oh, that’s really great to hear. How did you meet your husband?         

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So he used to own Eight Bites, which was a board game bar, like, and other things. A bar, a restaurant, hosted drag nights, lots of things in downtown Laramie. And so I met him when he was working at the bar on Halloween. So I was dressed as a cockroach, which was funny, but it was supposed to be. That’s romantic.         

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Okay. A giant cockroach meets. Oh, my goodness. I love that. Francesca.         

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Oh, my gosh. Well, tell people how they can find you and find your consultancy and learn more about you. So I have a website. My website is www.footnotelit.com, so that’s probably the easiest way of finding me. I also have an Instagram that I just set up yesterday.         

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So the handle for that is footnote lit. Lit, short for literary. So that’s probably the easiest way of finding me. Also, my email, my contact information, and my form for any potential inquiries are also all on my website. Oh, excellent.         

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Okay. Well, it has been great talking to you today, and I wish you so much luck. And how will people find out about your novel when that launches? Will you be posting that? I mean, I feel like this is such a long time into the future.         

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It’s okay. Not guaranteed in any way, but very hopeful. Okay, sure. I’ll be posting a lot about that if it does get accepted by a publisher on social media. Okay, well, then I wish you luck on that.         

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Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah. Have a great afternoon. Thanks, Emy.         

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Thank you for listening. I’m executive producer Emy Di Grappa. Winds of Change is brought to you by Wyoming Humanities Council, our co hosts and all the people who generously share their stories and their time. For more information, go to thinkwhy.org subscribe and never miss a show.