Daisy Buchanan
Senior leaders talk about wellbeing in policy terms and creativity in innovation terms, and then ask why their people still feel flat, anxious and reluctant to take a risk in a meeting. The two conversations are the same conversation. Confidence, creative thinking and emotional regulation are practised skills, and most workplaces have stopped giving people time to practise them.
Daisy Buchanan is a journalist, novelist and broadcaster who helps organisations build creative confidence, reading habits and honest conversations as practical tools for workplace wellbeing.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Daisy Buchanan
- A working novelist and journalist who teaches creative practice as a wellbeing discipline, not a soft skill. Her DK title Read Yourself Happy makes the case that reading is anxiety management with evidence, not a metaphor.
- Founder of the Creative Confidence Clinic and a tutor for Arvon, the UK creative writing charity. Her sessions on imposter syndrome and creative risk are built on a teaching practice, not a single keynote.
- Host of the literature podcast You’re Booked, with hundreds of long-form author interviews. She brings a tested craft of asking good questions, which transfers directly into panel hosting, internal town halls and leadership Q and A formats.
- Catalogue of four Sphere novels and three non-fiction books across DK, Headline and Hachette. The credibility is in the working output, not the speaker reel.
- Broadcast fluency across Woman’s Hour, the Today programme, This Morning and Good Morning Britain. Audiences get a speaker who can hold a room, an interviewee and a live moment with the same control.
Biography highlights
- Author of four novels published by Sphere (Little, Brown): Insatiable, Careering, Limelight and Pity Party. Insatiable was longlisted for the CWIP prize.
- Author of three non-fiction books: How To Be A Grown Up, The Sisterhood, and Read Yourself Happy (DK, 2025), on reading as a tool for anxiety.
- Host of the You’re Booked podcast, interviewing authors on their reading lives.
- Founder of the Creative Confidence Clinic, a writing community on Substack, and creator of the Write Like A Reader course. Tutor for the Arvon Foundation.
- Journalism in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times, Grazia (former “Dear Daisy” agony aunt), Marie Claire and The Pool.
- Broadcast credits include Woman’s Hour, Today, A Good Read, This Morning and Good Morning Britain. Guest-presented Booker Prize coverage for BBC News.
Biography
Wellbeing programmes have multiplied inside organisations over the past decade, and so has the language of psychological safety. Yet many leaders still find their teams cautious, distracted and reluctant to bring a half-formed idea into the room. The missing piece is often the daily practice of imagination, attention and honest conversation, which used to happen on the page and in long forms of reading.
Buchanan’s books take this on directly. Read Yourself Happy, published by DK in 2025, argues that the right book habit is a clinically meaningful intervention in anxiety. Her novels with Sphere, including Insatiable, Careering (adapted by BBC Radio 4) and Limelight, examine ambition, money and self-worth in working women’s lives. Her non-fiction includes The Sisterhood and How To Be A Grown Up, both written for readers navigating early career and adult identity.
The teaching grew out of the writing. She founded the Creative Confidence Clinic on Substack, tutors for the Arvon Foundation and hosts You’re Booked, a long-running literature podcast in which she conducts the kind of careful, generous author interview that is now uncommon in mainstream culture. The discipline of asking good questions and listening to the answer sits underneath her workplace sessions on imposter syndrome, creative risk and reading for wellbeing.
For organisations, the value is in the combination of a working journalist’s discipline, a novelist’s specificity about emotional life, and a broadcaster’s room presence. Audiences leave able to name what they were anxious about, with a small number of usable habits for attention and creative risk. Her broadcast work, from the Today programme to guest-presenting Booker Prize coverage for BBC News, also makes her a credible host for internal events where the speaker needs to land a difficult conversation, not deliver a slide deck.
Key speaking topics
- Reading and book habits as a tool for anxiety and mental health
- Creative confidence and imposter syndrome at work
- Asking better questions in leadership and team conversations
- Storytelling and narrative craft for business communication
- Women, ambition and the working life
- Event hosting, panel moderation and author-in-conversation formats
Ideal for
- People, culture and wellbeing leaders looking for a wellbeing voice that is literary and specific rather than clinical or generic
- Internal communications and L&D teams running sessions on creative confidence, imposter syndrome or storytelling
- Conference organisers needing a credible host or moderator for an author-in-conversation or fireside format
- Women’s networks, ERGs and book clubs inside organisations
Audience outcomes
- A working definition of creative confidence that they can practise without leaving their job
- A small set of reading and attention habits with a defensible link to anxiety reduction
- Sharper questions to take into one-to-ones, town halls and difficult team conversations
- Permission to take creative risk in writing, presenting and contributing in meetings
- A more honest sense of the gap between performed confidence and the real thing
Talks
A talk on how the right reading practice supports mental health, attention and empathy at work.
Key takeaways:
- Why a book habit functions as anxiety management, not leisure
- How reading rebuilds attention in a working culture that fragments it
- Practical reading prompts for teams under pressure
A talk on authenticity, creative risk and the cost of performing confidence at work.
Key takeaways:
- Why imposter feelings rise when surrounding culture is performative
- How to take a small creative risk in a low-trust environment
- Language for naming imposter patterns without using them as an excuse
A talk on creative practice as a resilience and lateral-thinking discipline.
Key takeaways:
- How imagination produces resilience and generosity, not just ideas
- Daily prompts for restoring play and curiosity inside working life
- The link between creative practice and better team behaviour
A talk on questioning craft for leaders, communicators and interviewers.
Key takeaways:
- Why most workplace questions close down rather than open up
- The structure of a question that gets you a real answer
- How to use questioning in one-to-ones, hiring and panel hosting