Peter Goulding

Hello, my name is Peter Goulding and I am a writer and climber. My first full length book, Slatehead: The Ascent of Britain's Slate Climbing Scene, is published on June 4th 2020 by New Welsh Rarebyte.

In 2019 I won the New Welsh Rheidol Prize for Writing with a Welsh Theme or Setting for my creative non-fiction piece called On Slate, which has led to publication.

I've spent most of my working life between pubs, kitchens, forests and building sites. I fell into writing accidentally, although I'd always wanted to be a writer since I was a boy reading Robert Westall. I wrote a blog called Climber in A Flat Land, which was just about me and my mates having a laugh, but people encouraged me to take it further, and in 2017-8 I did the UEA's MA in Biography and Creative Non-fiction. The mark I got wasn't great, but what I learned has made me a far better writer.

I was born in Liverpool, and moved to County Durham when I was 12. I currently live in rural Norfolk with my partner and son. I split my working time between being an instructor and trainer at Center Parcs Elveden and being a writer.

Anyone who knows me knows I am an obsessive climber. I came to it late in life, in my mid-thirties, and as soon as I tried it, there wasn't anything else I wanted to do. I love the slate quarries of Dinorwic in North Wales, I feel at home there for reasons I find hard to explain. Slatehead: The Ascent of Britain's Slate Climbing Scene, is an attempt to explain why I love it, alongside the stories of the pioneering climbers and the quarrymen who left us the rock faces to crawl up.