Between Heather and Grass: Poems and Photographs Filled with Love, Hope and Whippets

Xenia Tran was born in the Netherlands in 1962 and began writing and journaling at a young age. She enjoyed reading poetry in Dutch, French and English and soon English became her language of choice for writing poetry and short stories. Her early studies were interrupted by a desire to travel and explore different cultures. It wasn't until she was happily married and settled in London that she decided to return to study as a mature student. She studied for degrees in French Studies and in Applied Linguistics at Birkbeck College, University of London, whilst working full-time as an administrator in a research centre for a French company and running her own holistic practice as a complementary therapist. When she and her husband relocated to Kendal to be closer to her husband's ageing mother she joined a women's writing group where her passion for creative writing reignited. She submitted a few poems to publications and websites and was delighted to see them accepted. She wrote short stories and poems about their adopted rescue dogs with the idea of creating a book to help raise funds for animal shelters. She worked as a volunteer in a local animal shelter and later did voluntary work for a foster-based rescue organisation. After attending a Summer School at Queen's University Belfast she enrolled at Newcastle University, where she completed a postgraduate course in Creative Writing before relocating to the Scottish Highlands. The beauty of the Highland landscape and the quality of its light inspired her to invest in a good camera and take photographs to accompany her writing for her blog Whippet Wisdom. It was meant to be a simple place to record the walks with their adopted dogs in images and words, an organic place to develop her writing and photography. It quickly gained a loyal following, she met and connected with poets, fiction writers and photographers around the world, and in 2018 she started a second blog, Tranature, to share her personal observations on nature.