About Tanya

Tanya Clarke is a Brit living in Vancouver. Born in Tripoli, Libya 1969, she lived most of her life in the UK until 2017, when she moved to Canada with her family. 

An Introverted Extrovert

Tanya's youngest daughter describes her mother as an introverted extrovert. Tanya tends to agree, adding she is also prone to stubbornness and bouts of procrastination. Tanya is a creative soul who loves art and writing. 

All Things Analogue

Tanya admits to a mild case of analogue camera obsession. Several examples are lined up neatly in the cupboard in her study, alongside three flashes, a couple of light meters and other items peculiar to the world of cameras and photography. 

Her growing love of all things stationary is threatening to take over her desk. She loves Blackwing pencils, writing with a fountain pen and notebooks.

Last year, Tanya became the proud owner of a brand new record player. Having given away the last of her record collection when she left the UK, Tanya has started re-building it again. Her album total currently stands at five.

Reading & Writing

Tanya has always been an avid reader. As a child, she read everything from the back of a cereal packet to trade magazines while waiting at the dentist, to all the books she could find in the local library to all the books on her parents’ bookshelf.

She remembers, especially, loving books with pictures and lots of dialogue. Long paragraphs of exposition were never her favourite. 

New Ideas

Tanya now lives with her husband, two daughters, one dog and one cat halfway up a mountain in North Vancouver. Curious about the idea of writing fiction, Tanya took a chance in 2018 and enrolled in an online short story writing course.

After four months, Tanya had written her first story in about 30 years. Pleased with this outcome and fired up with all the learning she had done, Tanya started A Picture, A Story in 2019 with the sole purpose of writing a short story every day using one of her photographs as inspiration. You can find these in the Writing Prompts category.

Tanya has recently completed the first draft of a longer story. She describes it as a smaller story inside a larger one and is surprised that she’s written something that could be described as fantasy. She’s now working on a rewrite.

Fun Facts

Tanya has a BA (Hons) in Fine Art (Glasgow School of Art, 1996) and an MA in Photography (London College of Communication, 2013). 

Before the birth of her two glorious daughters, Tanya worked in website design for several years on projects for large and small companies in the UK. 

In 2018, Tanya completed The Story Intensive, an online short story writing course at the Sarah Selecky Writing School.