Our History

The ReLit Foundation is the brainchild of authors Paula Byrne and Jonathan Bate. Our mission is to practice and research bibliotherapy, the ancient art of book-healing. Two and a half thousand years ago, Aeschylus, the father of dramatic literature, claimed that “words are the physicians of a mind diseased.” We invite you to join us on the journey to discover whether you, your loved ones, and others going through life’s difficult times can be relit by the best words that have been written through the ages by the best authors.

ReLit came into being at a gala event in The Shard, London, in January 2016, where we launched our online course Literature and Mental Health: Reading for Wellbeing and our poetry anthology with guided reading, Stressed Unstressed: Classic Poems to Ease the Mind. The anthology has sold over 20,000 copies and is available from Amazon and all good booksellers (if you can, please support your local independent bookstore). The online course, developed in collaboration with the Business School at Warwick University, ran three times on the FutureLearn platform and engaged over 50,000 participants. At its heart were 42 filmed conversations about the mental health benefits of literature with doctors, writers, readers and such well-known figures as actor Sir Ian McKellen, broadcaster Melvyn Bragg, polymath Stephen Fry, self-help guru Rachel Kelly, and Booker Prize winning author Ben Okri: all these videos are available on our YouTube channel.

• bespoke workshops in a prison for serious offenders serving life sentences, a halfway house for female offenders re-entering the community, and a specialist ward devoted to severe adolescent mental health issues

• inspirational talks and poetry workshops in schools

• work at the bedside in hospices in both the UK and USA

• poetry workshops for healthcare workers, addressing the issue of burnout

• donation of copies of Stressed Unstressed to hospitals, hospices, schools and healthcare waiting rooms

• a Summer School, which ran for 4 years in Oxford

• a poetry competition for young people, with the challenge of creating images of calm in 140 characters

• publication of a volume of ‘slow poetry’ by co-founder Jonathan Bate

• research into the psychological effectiveness of mindful reading, in collaboration with Oxford University and Arizona State University, including randomized controlled trials.

Dr Paula Byrne
Founder, Lead Practitioner & Executive Director

Paula has taught English and Drama in a high school, a community college, and at Oxford, Warwick and Liverpool universities. She has written two novels (Look to your Wife and Blonde Venus) and several bestselling biographies, including The Real Jane Austen,  Belle: The True Story behind the Movie, Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead and Kick: The True Story of JFK's Forgotten Sister and the Heir to Chatsworth. Her major new biographies of the novelists Barbara Pym and Thomas Hardy were published to great acclaim in 2021 and 2024. She is a qualified Couples & Family Psychotherapist, with particular specialism in adolescent mental health and wellbeing.

Her website is www.paulabyrne.com

Professor Sir Jonathan Bate
Literature Consultant & Chair of the Board

Jonathan is a well-known literary scholar, broadcaster, critic and creative writer (jonathanbate.com). The author of many books on Shakespeare, he has written prize-winning biographies of the poets William Wordsworth, John Clare and Ted Hughes. His most recent books are a bibliotherapeutic memoir, Mad about Shakespeare: Life Lessons from the Bard, and Bright Star, Green Light, a “parallel life” of John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald. He has written a novel, The Cure for Love; Being Shakespeare, a one-play for Simon Callow that had three runs in London's West End and a tour to New York and Chicago; and a volume of poems, The Shepherd's Hut, with royalties going to ReLit. He is Regents Professor of Literature at Arizona State University, a Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University, and Chair of the Hawthornden Foundation.

Dr Andrew Schuman
Medical Practitioner

Andrew is our lead medical practitioner and was one of the editors of our anthology Stressed Unstressed. A busy GP in an inner city practice in the UK National Health Service, he also teaches doctors and medical students. He has always loved reading (and occasionally writing) poetry – often to escape the pressures of work. An insomniac, he does most of his reading between the hours of one and three a.m. You can read about his The Poetry of Medicine project at this website.

Tom Bate
Development Manager

Tom graduated with honors at Arizona State University, having previously studied at University College London and Magdalen College School Oxford. Majoring in English and American Literature. He is now a Fellow of the New Writers Project, working towards an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Texas, Austin. He has a particular interest in Carl Jung. He has previously been a high school literature teacher and an intern at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology.

Ellie Bate

Media Manager

Ellie graduated summa cum laude from Arizona State University, majoring in Justice Studies. She previously studied at Oxford High School for Girls and is passionate about young people’s mental health and wellbeing. She runs ReLit’s social media accounts and is always eager to post stories about the inspirational and stress-busting effects of great literature. In her day job, she works for Macmillan publishing in New York.

Harry Bate

Video Production

Harry is about to begin a degree at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and is hoping for a future in the film industry.