Once upon a time, there was a website called Twitter. It was a place of connection and community, home to many writers, journalists, comedians, actors and everyday people who’d share funny and interesting things in a digital note of 140 characters or less. It was a place to get news. It was a place to meet people. It was a place to build a name online for yourself. And then eventually, like many things do in the age of enshittification, it was taken over by an billionaire who chose volume over value, filled it with AI bots, nazis and killed the essence of what made it so appealing in the first place.
But before that happened, it was a place where you could connect with interesting people and follow their interesting lives. One of these interesting people I came across was Katie Clapham. She had opened up a bookshop with her mum in her hometown of St Annes on Sea in Lancashire and if you wanted to, you could DM her to order a book and support her independent business. Katie had been tweeting about the arrival of a huge stack of the novel Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld and I messaged her to buy a copy.
Since then, I have followed Katie’s journey online and cheered on from across the internet as she launched her Substack, Receipt from the Bookshop, and turned it into a book, Receipts From the Bookshop: A Bookseller’s Year, which is out this week. Katie’s writing is funny, snappy and an invitation into her very real world of books. I love it and was over the moon when she chose Hurdling as a place to host some of her book launch tour.
Here, Katie tells me about her hurdles, how she got to where she is today, making strategic life choices in order to prioritise happiness, being the person her parents made her and the curse of being your own hurdle.
Hiya Katie. Please tell us a little bit about you as a person, and a snapshot of your life right now:
Hi Emily, I’m a writer and bookseller. I co-own an independent bookshop with my mum, but because writing is now my main job, I’m only at the bookshop one or two days a week. As well as my Substack, I write books for children, and my first book for adults is out next month. I am a word person – in the way that other people might have a musical ear or a painter’s eye, I assume I have a word brain. They’ve always been my favourite toys to play with, and my days are filled with them. I read every day, even if I can only manage minutes.
Because I am currently under the strict regime of my daughter’s school day, my working at home days are generally pretty regimented. School run, dog walk, work, lunch and/or swim/gym, work, school run, despair at what to cook for dinner, etc.
Q: Where in the world do you live?
I live in St. Annes on the Sea in Lancashire. I grew up here, but I lived in London for a while before I moved back. I live near the beach, and I walk my dog on the beautiful sand dunes most days. St. Annes is just down the road from Blackpool, so while all of the fun of the fair (relentless hen parties, pubs on the pier, an actual theme park) is just a short drive away, St. Annes remains fairly quiet and golf-ish. It’s a lovely place to live. I didn’t ever expect that I’d end up settling back here, but I’m so glad I did.
Q: How would you describe yourself as a person? Tell me who you are, where you came from, where you’ve been and where you’re going.
Because I am still wearing three layers in May, I would say I am a person who ‘feels the cold’, but day-to-day I am in good health and I am happy. Generally, I am a fairly relaxed person, and I have no interest in aggro or confrontation, ever. Annoyingly for me, I am also prone to the odd bit of private over-thinking/catastrophising, while the reasonable part of my brain firmly assures me that everything is fine and that I have not offended anyone with my perfectly reasonable email and that just because I haven’t heard from someone for a few days they’re not dead. Despite that, I’m actually quite a positive person, and I only really know this in comparison with my business partner and real-life mum, who is not.
Q: What were you like as a child? How would you describe how you showed up in the world, how you felt and how you interacted with your own life and the lives of others?
I am an only child, which feels like quite a defining thing about me. My parents worked all the time, and I was farmed out to various play schemes and after school childminders, with long stays at my grandparents over the summer. But I was also taken on incredible holidays, to interesting music concerts and to the cinema most weeks. Time spent with my parents made me into a cultured, well-travelled child with grown-up taste in films and music. Because my dad was into tech, we were early DVD adopters, early internet adopters, early Mp3 adopters, and because I had no siblings to share the home PC with, I spent a lot of my evenings and weekends online. I’ve been online most of my life (but crucially, not until I was a teenager). I have always been a good writer, and even though I never hugely embraced it about myself until now (my Substack category), a funny person.
Q. What are you like now? How would you describe how you show up in the world, how you feel and how you interact with your own life and the lives of others? What are the main differences between who you are now and your childhood self?
I don’t think there’s any surprises about the adult that I’ve turned out to be. I am still very much the person my parents made me. Perhaps they were surprised I chose poetry at university rather than fiction (a strategic choice again – I thought focussing on poetry would make me a better writer across all forms; I think I was right) and I think they were probably surprised that I didn’t choose a career-job because they’ve always been successful professional people, and all my school reports indicated I could be that too. Now I think they’re proud that I’ve not made a job my entire life. I am living and working in a way that I wish they’d been able to, and in a way that I hope my daughter will be able to.
Q: When you were younger, what did you want to be when you ‘grew up’?
I wanted to be involved in making something great. Like a film, or an album. I didn’t want to be an actress or a singer, I just wanted to be part of the team that made those things happen. It’s funny that I’ve ended up working mostly on my own, because it’s definitely the times that I get to interact with other people that I enjoy the most – editorial notes, creative discussions, etc. I can always feel myself improved by the input of others. I don’t think I had a plan much beyond that, I think on some level I assumed I’d have to get a ‘real job’ that I would generally hate, and I would be very lucky if I liked it even a tiny bit, but perhaps it could be near something that I liked, like books or films or clothes or music.
Q: What do you do for a living? Tell me your current job title and all the job titles you’ve previously worn in the past.
I’m a published writer of books, an earning Substacker, a casual bookseller and a semi-useless part-owner of a bookshop business. Previously, I’ve been a production editor of an orthopaedic medical journal and a freelance copy-editor/proof-reader for the same medical journal. I also did a summer’s worth of data-input at an office my mum managed, a few fleeting shifts as a barmaid (I hated the chit-chat), was momentarily on silver service in a fancy hotel (hated the lack of chit-chat) and, thrillingly, an after-school cleaner at my high school (loved it, worked with my friends, got to use the big floor buffer, we got paid a fortune and barely did any work).
Q: How do you feel about what you do? Does what you do define who you are? If so, has it always? If not, why not?
The bookshop is the thing ‘I do’ that is easy to point to as a job, but writing is who I am and who I have always been. That said, I don’t think it defines me because a lot of people who know me have no real experience of me as a writer at all. Isn’t it strange how secret your online life can feel sometimes, even though you’re not actively trying to hide it? When people who’ve known me for years ‘find out’ that I’m a writer they act like I’ve been keeping a secret, but I haven’t, I just don’t talk about it very much in real life.
Q: Tell me about your best job ever. Why did you love it? What did it give you? What did it teach you about yourself?
I had only ever had one full-time job before I became self-employed at 24. Working at the medical journal was a fantastic job; I joined out of uni and it was a perfect first proper job – I loved the people, I love the building and location I worked in, I loved that I had a real wage and could rent a flat and go to gigs and buy pret sandwiches. It gave me a very happy, busy couple of years in London. The actual editing work I did was fairly routine, but it was exciting to have the responsibilities and I was really proud of the promotion from assistant to production editor. I guess it taught me that I could be happy in ‘a normal job’ and I think I rely on that nice experience as a comforting thought for if the writer/bookseller thing comes to an end.
Q: Now tell me about your worst job ever. Why did you hate it? What made it so bad? What did it teach you about what you value in a job?
The barmaid life was really not for me. I had little patience for the patrons’ conversation when it was quiet and I hated the rush when it was busy. Luckily it was only a Summer job. I think it taught me that I need to really like my colleagues to be happy. Well, have nice colleagues, or no colleagues at all.
Q: How did you get to where you are today? What did it take? What decisions did you make? What was the path like? What hurdles stood in your way? Was it extremely difficult? What did you say yes to? What did you say no to?
I am quite good at prioritising happiness in the grander scheme and I’ve made some quite strategic choices in life to honour that. I left London and stepped off the career ladder to focus on my writing, knowing that otherwise I might find myself waiting for retirement to remember to start. I know I could be earning more money if I had another job, but I don’t think I’d be happier. I can’t say that it was extremely difficult because if the circumstances hadn’t been exactly as they were, we simply wouldn’t have done it. My mum’s voluntary redundancy from her job meant there was money to start the bookshop. For the first couple of years I lived at home again so it didn’t really matter that I didn’t earn very much. We were lucky enough to be able to experiment with having a business without worrying about it destroying everything if it didn’t work out. If there was any significant risk, we wouldn’t have pursued it. The only thing I’ve risked is the years out of other employment, if I had to go job-hunting tomorrow my CV might not be very impressive – but I am a writer, so I reckon I could spin it out a bit.
Q: Is the reality of where you are today different to how you imagined it would be? If so, how? What are the biggest differences?
I don’t think I had the references to imagine the life I lead today. I never imagined I would be able to pick up my daughter from school or have a dog that I could walk in the daytime! I certainly didn’t imagine I’d be married to that boy from the other class. I assumed I’d be in London, working long days, wearing office clothes. That’s just what a job looked like to me when I was a child, and that’s what high school told us to aspire to.
Q: Who are the people you feel the most like yourself around? How did you meet them? What’s your relationship like? Why do you think they make you feel like this?
I don’t want it to sound like I’m less like myself around my other friends and family, but I do feel like there’s a particularly unique bond I have with the friends I lived with at university. We don’t live anywhere near each other any more, and we’re not even especially good at staying in regular contact, but as soon as we’re together the years disappear. I don’t have any siblings to compare it to, but it feels more familial because we lived under the same roof. I also think I’m sometimes more myself online and in my writing. In real life you’re reading the room and responding appropriately, but online the room is very open-plan, you have to be open to the idea that absolutely anyone might read what you’ve written, so I end up writing in the voice that I talk to myself in. Sometimes that’s the truest one.
Q: What’s the biggest hurdle you’ve ever had to get over? Why was it stood in your way? How did you get over it? Did anyone help you? What did getting over the hurdle unlock for you in your life? How do you feel about that particular hurdle when you look back on it now?
I find it quite difficult to think of an external hurdle that I can point a finger at, or an internal hurdle that isn’t just the ongoing process of being a lazy human being with an overactive imagination. The hurdle is always me. Hi, I’m the hurdle, it’s me.
Q: What’s a hurdle that regularly trips you up?
Waiting for some magical windows of time that I know will never really present themselves. I put off reading certain books, or beginning new writing projects or establishing complex fitness routines because I am waiting for (Bernard’s watch!?) the ability to pause the world while I have a chance to crack on beyond the immediate to-do list. The thing is, I know that this time will never arrive, and - with work in particular – that I manage to do almost everything once there is a deadline set. All I need is for someone to expect something from me and I can find the time for it, but when you’re a writer it’s quite awkward when you can’t just get on with it. (Why not? Isn’t that exactly that you like doing?!) I almost need to beg my agent/editors for homework. Writing is the revision of schoolwork; it’s optional and it’s only you who suffers if you don’t do it. And, honestly, I barely did any revision.
Q: What’s the best thing about your life right now?
My family, my freedom, my flexibility. Not my physical flexibility of course, that could definitely do with some work. Creak, creak, creak.
Q: Do you find life hard? If yes, why? If not, why not?
I don’t, and I know I am so embarrassingly lucky to be able to say that. I don’t mean hard things haven’t happened. I’ve had a sleepless baby, my husband had a bit of cancer, sometimes my mind works against me, but for most days in my life I’ve been able to wake up happy. I have lots of love and I love a lot of things, I am barely ever bored (housework is the exception to that). Even though I have very little planned, I feel like I have a lot to look forward to, even if they’re just more days that are like these. I sometimes feel guilty about that too. Why am I allowed to be happy when so many people aren’t, and then I worry that I am just owed more bad things that must be on their way. And then I have to ask that reasonable part of my brain to step in again …
Q: What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?
“Mummy, you should put down your phone.”
Q: What’s the worst advice you’ve ever been given?
Some dieting bullshit that meant I had to measure the milk in my tea.
Q: After your days, how would you like to be remembered by those who knew you?
This question unnerves me a little because I don’t think it will matter much if they remember me as fun or clever or stylish if they don’t also remember me as a nice person who was kind and generous. Hm. Are you the ghost of Christmas past warning me to be kinder and more generous? I’ll try!
Q: Who is the person you admire the most? What is about them that makes you feel this way?
My husband. He IS the sort of person people will remember as kind and generous. The Bob Cratchit to my Scrooge. He is the most capable person I’ve ever met; he is good at almost everything he puts his hand to because he has the patience to be methodical and has an artist’s attention to detail. He’s also extremely fun and is, genuinely, one of the greatest dads of all time. A+ human being. I wish I was more like him every day.
Q: Have you ever had a big revelation in your life that caused you to make a change? What prompted the revelation? What changes did you make?
I don’t think it was a revelation so much as slowly accumulating the information that work didn’t have to mean being employed in an office by someone else from (a minimum of) 9-5, Monday to Friday. Flexible working or self-employment wasn’t something that was even hinted at when we were all writing personal statements on our UCAS forms. As a fairly academic child, the information presented to me was quite short-sighted – get an entry level job, get promoted, work more, earn more, work more, earn more. When I realised earning wasn’t my top priority and that having happier days was, I made the moves towards finding a way to work that helps me live the life I want. (I know how annoying it is that I said that like it was really simple, and you will have to take my word that I deeply understand that it is not.)
Q: What’s one regret that you have in your life? (If you’re someone who says they have no regrets because everything that’s happened is what brought you to where you are today, tell me something that you’d go back and change – if it meant that nothing else would change as a consequence.)
These days it feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything I want to, so I sometimes think about all the time I wasted when I was younger – why didn’t I learn three languages or five musical instruments or build consistent exercise routines that would be second nature to me now? The regret is just that I didn’t take advantage of all the time that was available to me before I had dependents and chores and work, but I guess that I spent it growing up and I had a good time, so I can’t be too harsh on my younger self.
Q: What is something that deeply concerns you about the world today? something that you think about on a daily basis?
Sometimes I do worry about the future in the way a big Hollywood movie would, like WHAT IS THE HUMAN PLAN FOR WHEN THE SUN DIES!?! What will my future ancestors have to endure as our planet fails? But on a more local level – I worry that my daughter is growing up into a world where AI diagnoses patients instead of doctors and that people order individual loaves of bread online instead of walking to a corner shop. There is such a thing as too much convenience, and the world becomes smaller when everything fits into a phone.
Q: What is something that’s made you laugh recently?
Old clips of Ant and Dec on SMTV shouting ‘IT DOESN’T RHYME’ to people playing Wonky Donkey. Ordinary TV used to be an event.
Q: Well me the one great story you have to tell. Maybe it’s the story you always dine out on. Or maybe it’s your favourite funny story. Or the one your friends and family always ask you to tell.
I think my best story is the time I bumped into Tom Waits in a music shop in Edinburgh, but really the most popular story about me is about the time I discovered a plain digestive in a pack of chocolate hob-nobs, promptly emailed to McVities to complain, only to find out my dad had put it there as a joke. I wrote to McVities again to apologise, and they sent me some vouchers for biscuits telling me not to share them with my dad. The two key factors to understand in this story are – I was a bored teenager with internet access, eating hob-nobs at home after school before my parents came home for tea, and, crucially, we did not have digestives at home – my dad had brought the digestive home from work specifically to trick me, a few biscuits down into the open hob-nobs!!!
Q: Tell me about the greatest loves of your life. (This could be a partner, friends, family members, a hobby, a job, a pet.) What made them so great?
It is my husband and our daughter. Sorry to all other children but I am obsessed with the one I got. She’s the funniest and the sweetest. She is the most brilliant story I ever wrote.
Q: Do you have any parting words?
Sorry for all the times I sound like a smug smugly smuggerson in this interview, I promise I am really just as anxious as everyone else. And thanks Emily for inviting me to go hurdling with you. I feel like Sally Gunnell.
This interview is part of the Hurdling interview series. You can find more of them here. You can keep up with Katie, and see the work she shares, on her Instagram, her bookshop’s, Storytellers, Inc, Instagram and on her Substack, Receipts from the Bookshop. You can also buy Receipts From the Bookshop: A Bookseller’s Year here.
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