Word Kitchen has grown out of David Lloyd and Pippa Marriott’s involvement in promoting writing and writers.
Initially working alongside Grace Palmer and the wonderful model provided by Novel Nights, we set up an East Devon Open Mic.
Both of us have also been involved in curating and/or leading creative writing courses including residential and online.
“Thank you for what you do for writers”
“It’s brilliant what you are doing in the area of supporting writers”
“It was a lovely evening and a great introduction to the group”
“I was so inspired by last night that I went back to a longer poem in progress to move it forward”
“I feel it is great testament to you both that a beginner writer can be made to feel so welcome at such an event, as I surely was. It has given me a great confidence boost with my writing and I am most grateful to have had the opportunity”
“You have created a truly inclusive space”
Our ingredients
Writers, writing, community, conviviality, confidence, support, humour, more writing and writers, microphones, blank pages, space to think, space to talk and to share, endless imagination, curiosity, questions, humanity, love. And coffee.
Word Kitchen cooking up stories with recipes for resilience and ingredients for change
Word Kitchen cooking up stories with recipes for resilience and ingredients for change
The Story So Far
David Lloyd and Pippa Marriott met on the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Exeter in 2018. They kept in touch through their writing, and through Novel Nights, run by the talented Grace Palmer. They organised events at the Exeter Phoenix during 2019 and early 2020, including online author interviews. Then the lockdowns happened.
Picking up the threads in 2022, David approached Brook Kitchen in Budleigh Salterton. Pippa, David and Angela, the owner, saw an opportunity for spoken word events at the arts gallery café.
From a standing start they launched during the summer of 2022 and continued with two further events that autumn, one for prose writers and one for poets. Since then, they have run two events each quarter and held a summer party in June 2023, before holding two further open mics in the autumn. Their events have attracted writers and audiences from all over Devon and beyond including Somerset and Dorset.
Taking stock, Pippa and David were interested in introducing the format of these events to other communities, reaching places which are not so well served. So Word Kitchen was born over a cup of coffee and croissant at The Exploding Bakery. They wanted to create something sustainable and looked for new opportunities.
They applied for a grant to support Word Kitchen and were s funded by the Creative East Devon Fund through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund for the first year of their work.
Their first project was with Dunkeswell Youth Club, working alongside Youth Club Committee stalwart Anne Barratt. In a series of workshops, Pippa encouraged school-age students to explore and experiment with stories.
Thanks to the funding, Word Kitchen also ran a free writing workshop at Brook Kitchen on the theme of New Beginnings, and a special poetry open mic evening on March 6th headlined by former Bard of Exeter, the extraordinary Edward Tripp.
Fast forward to 2025 and we have lots of events and writing sessions under our belts, and a community of writers who support each other brilliantly. This July we take on the leadership of The Exeter Novel Prize, and we are also curating a 2-day event in the mini marquee at Budleigh Salterton Literary Festival as a Hub for local writers (that means you, folks!)
There is a link here to a May ‘25 interview on The Thursday Book Club, Jonathan Posner chatting to Pippa ( that bit starts about 39 mins in!)
David Lloyd
David Lloyd was a copy writer and communications specialist in London before he moved to East Devon in 2015. Working at organisations like the BBC and the Department for Education he oversaw a number of significant launches and had to deal with inevitable media crises.
Born, raised and educated in South Wales he has written about his years as a closeted gay teenager in 1960s Cardiff in a memoir Going Back published in extracts on the website Nation Cymru. He explored the theme of home and belonging in an essay on the Welsh word ‘hiraeth’, a word that defies definition at times.
He was also influenced by his mother’s stories about Tiger Bay and World War Two that she would regale him around the coal fire when he was a small child. Many years later this led to the beginnings of a psychological thriller set in Cardiff in 1941 which is currently on hold.
His short story The Cormorant was published online in 2021 by Birkbeck’s Mechanics’ Institute Review. This came out of a play he collaborated on with Word Kitchen’s educator Pippa Marriott based on the life of early Edwardian fisheries pioneer Stephen Reynolds. The production was part of Sidmouth’s 2019 Sea Fest and involved a cast drawn from the local community. It went on to be recorded and is on You Tube.
David coordinated a number of Zoom gatherings of writers during the lockdowns where he helped bring together writers who had met previously on writing retreats. The workshops were focused on writing in progress.
He has also supported a number of retreats through The Writing Mill which were led by Cynan Jones and Vanessa Gebbie. David has also been on three writing retreats at The Arvon Foundation and Ty Newydd in Wales.
A bit of a latecomer to creative writing, David believes that whatever your age, background and story everyone is capable of finding their voice on the page.
Pippa Marriott
Pippa became a published poet (alongside Brian Patten) at the age of 9, just after she had finished her first (and - to date - only) ‘novel’. At 10 she stopped talking for 9 months. This turned out to be a temporary blip, but it served to teach her that people listen much more carefully when you whisper.
After Art College, an English Degree and full-time peace movement work, Pippa got so nervous in her PGCE interview that she was unable to speak. Luckily she still got a place, and teaching (English and Drama) became her main occupation. Other ‘projects’ have included video work in Belfast, curating TEDx conferences, writing and directing plays, training educators, using role play to develop communication skills, bringing up kids and moving house lots of times.
While studying for her MA, Pippa set up a creative writing group in Exeter Prison. She continues to offer creative writing in a range of settings including internationally, and believes in the transformative power of authorship. She has also worked with Living Room Theatre on All is Mended - a repurposed Midsummer Night’s dream set in a care home - and the accompanying poetry collection A Little Bit of Magic, curated from verbatim interviews in care homes during and post Covid. She toured The Washing Machine of Destiny as co-writer/script wrangler and director through 2023/24. The play is entertaining and enlightening audiences about the wonders of the autistic imagination.
Pippa lives on the edge of Dartmoor up a very steep hill with Mavis (the dog) and Ralph (the husband). Most of her ideas come from dog walks or hot baths. She is developing two documentary projects - one that takes her Back to Belfast and the other a Phoenix commission looking at the artist David Oxtoby.
Though Pippa has focused on developing and publishing other people’s work, including Gaza Poets Society founder Mohammed Moussa, she has also been shortlisted for the Bridport poetry prize, and had work published in various anthologies and collections.