Bath Spa and Beyond! Max Boucherat Q&A
Max graduated from the MA in Writing for Young People in 2017. THE LAST LIFE OF LORI MILLS, is their love letter to both horror and videogames, and the book their ghost and game-obsessed younger self would have loved to read. Since publication LORI has been named a Waterstones Best Children's Book of 2024 and nominated for the Carnegie Medal.
What brought you to Bath Spa?
I once had an interview for the Creative Writing MA at Cardiff University, not understanding that it was exclusively focused on adult literature. When the realisation hit, I attempted to bluff my way through the rest of the interview by claiming that OF COURSE I read adult literature, I LOOOVE adult literature, don’t even worry about it!!
Fortunately for all involved, I’m a prodigiously bad liar, and the tutors saw right through me. They kindly suggested that I give up on Cardiff, and that I’d be much happier at Bath Spa instead. Bath Spa’s reputation precedes itself!
What story did you include in the anthology?
A fantasy adventure called The Thief of Dreams. It had evil unicorns in it back when unicorns were all still cute and fluffy. It had a girl with wings who could travel inside of people’s dreams, and who was hiding in them from Astrid Andromeda Starhooves, High Queen of the Unicorns. It featured a location called the Dream House, which was where gods and monsters would travel to experience the finest hand crafted dreams. In short, the book featured Every Single Idea. As in ALL of the ideas. In the world. Every Last Literal One Of Them. Put even simpler, the book was a MESS. And I am still deeply proud of it!
Tell us about your route to publication
LONG. But worth it. Totally worth it. I’d already been submitting to literary agents waaay before I started the course, then it took another 6 or so years to land my (Wonderful! Amazing! Fantastic!) agent, Anne Clark. But whilst the MA wasn’t a magic bullet to getting published, this is the bit where I get to say – unironically, and with heart-stopping earnestness! – that the real publication story was the friends made along the way. After all this time, we still workshop each other’s writing. We still support each other, and cheer each other on. I’m so lucky they’re in my life, and I know for sure I wouldn’t be published without them.
What was the best piece of advice you received during your time on the MA?
Not really a piece of advice? More a general point to Have Faith in your own writing abilities. You are a Writer. A Capital ‘W’ Writer. Have Faith in your words. Have Faith in them.
Did you write anything on the course that you would like to return to one day?
Nope! Like Edna Mode says in The Incredibles, “I never look back, darling. It distracts from the now.” And whilst, in seriousness, this approach obviously doesn’t work for everyone, one of the wonderful things about the course is the way it pushes you to be bold! Experiment! Try new ideas! Horror fiction, for instance, was the LAST thing I thought I’d be writing. Yet, in the end, experimenting in a genre I had no business dabbling in was eventually what got me published.
The Last Life of Lori Mills is published by Harper Collins. The highly anticipated sequel, One Thousand Dreams of Shoelace is due in January 2026.