Chris Cleave
AUTHOR – TEACHER – THERAPIST
Award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author of books published in 36 languages. Existential psychotherapist and chartered psychologist.
What if the work of being human again turns out to be the main work of our lives now?
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Across all my work – in the therapy room, in the classroom and on the page – I explore how people live with intelligence and grace amid the world's accelerating trauma. To be human in this dehumanising age is an act of resistance.
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My forthcoming non-fiction book, Human Again: The Journey Back To Ourselves (2027), brings together psychotherapy and storytelling to offer a hopeful reframing of trauma – not as a private failing, but as a shared human inheritance, and a path back into relationship with the world.
Dr Chris Cleave – Photo: Tom Trevatt, 2026
Books
“We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.”
“What good is it to teach a child to count, if you don't show them that they count for something?”
“Just beyond your sight, life might be moving in ways that are moments away from being revealed to you.”
“Stunning” - The New York Times
“I'm going to write to you about the emptiness that was left when you took my boy away. I'm going to write so you can look into my empty life and see what a human boy really is from the shape of the hole he leaves behind. I want you to feel that hole in your heart and stroke it with your hands and cut your fingers on its sharp edges.”