Individual residencies / Olot
JAY MCKENZIE
From Monday, 17 November 2025 to Monday, 24 November 2025
Bio
Jay McKenzie is the author of Mim and Wiggy’s Grand Adventure. Her work appears in adda, Maudlin House, Fictive Dream, Fahmidan Journal, The Hooghly Review, Roi Faineant and others. She has won prizes such as the Exeter Story Prize, The Henshaw Prize and others and shortlisted for The Edinburgh Story Award, Exeter Novel Prize, The Alpine Fellowship, Bath Short Story Award, Fish Short Story Prize, Oxford Flash Fiction Prize and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She has lived in Greece, Singapore, Indonesia, South Korea and Australia. Her next novel How to Lose the Lottery will be released by Harper Fiction in Spring 2026. She lives with her husband, daughter and too many cardigans, and is represented by Hellie Ogden at WME.
Project
During the residency, McKenzie intends to work on my next novel: as of yet untitled. This novel will be published with HarperCollins UK, and will be the second book in the two-book deal agreed with editor Martha Ashby in October 2024. The novel explores the journey of a woman in her forties, Jaynie, dealing with the discovery of a sister she never knew she had and the challenges of becoming a sister just as she is orphaned. The novel will be an exploration of loneliness, perceptions of family and grief, told through the lens of gentle humour and tender moments. Her style is contemporary commercial fiction.
My residency at Faberllull Olot was the most productive working time I have had as a writer. At home, I am juggling family life, which means that writing time is squeezed into the few short early morning hours before the family day starts. At the residency, I was able to spend hours at a time fully immersed in my Work in Progress, which is a novel exploring the complexities of unusual family dynamics. Not only did I complete a first draft of this, I also had time to create two new flash fiction pieces and start a short story which has been living in my head for months.
The space was both breathtaking and inspiring. The cool mountain air blowing in through my window kept me inspired and refreshed, and walks in Olot, to Montsacopa and on our excursion to Besalu had my imagination firing.
Certainly the most wonderful thing though was the wonderful, inspiring artists and hopefully friends that I made at the residency. Such warm, interesting, inspiring individuals who I feel honoured to have been chosen to be part of.
An unforgettable week that I will be encouraging all of my writer and artist friends to apply for.
