About

Georgina Lawton

Take World writing Retreats in Portugal is the brainchild of Georgina Lawton, a writer and London-born transplant to Lisbon since 2020. Georgina is the author of Raceless, a memoir and socio-political analysis of race and identity which The New York Times called ‘freshly fascinating‘, and which has sold over 10,000 copies worldwide, since its release with Harper Collins (US) and Sphere (UK) in 2021. Released in the same year, her five-part Audible podcast, The Secrets In Us, examining DNA tests and issues around family and identity, won Gold at the New York Radio Award and Bronze at the British Podcast Awards. Georgina works as a freelance journalist, feature writer and columnist for the Guardian.

A keen travel writer, Georgina has also written the book, Black Girls Take World a travel guide for black women which was released in 2021 with Hardie Grant. Her travel writing has appeared in Lonely Planet, Metro, iPaper, Adventure and a variety of other publications and focuses mainly on solo, adventure travel and de-colonising travel. In 2023, Georgina will be mentoring 4 up-and-coming travel writers from underrepresented backgrounds on a group trip with Intrepid travel to Croatia. She also creates TikTok content on Portugal, books, solo travel and her greyhound owner and is currently working on her first novel.

Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff

The November retreat will also be co-run by Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff, author award-winning freelance journalist, book editor, columnist, host, and Editor of the books Black Joy (Penguin, 2021), a new anthology that explores what it means to be Black and British today, I Will Not Be Erased: Our stories about growing up as people of colour (Walker, 2019), a groundbreaking essay collection, and the editor and main author of Mother Country: Real Stories of the Windrush Children (Hachette, 2018), a leading exploration of the Windrush generation.

Charlie is a creative with focuses on features and profiles on identity, culture, lifestyle, travel, media, and social politics as well as the Managing Editor at Skin Deep, a columnist at Stylist magazine. She also writes a weekly newsletter on the culture of friendship, called The Companion (which you should subscribe to ASAP) and is formerly a Senior Staff Editor at the New York Times and Editor-in-Chief at gal-dem magazine.