My debut memoir, ADRIFT, is published in the UK by W&N. You can order from your bookshop of choice, including Amazon, Waterstones, Blackwell’s, and bookshop.org.

'What would it mean to name this place I'm in, to map it? To say: this is the landscape. It looks like this, smells like this, at night these are the sounds that carry on the wind. Almost-motherhood . . .'

ADRIFT is a memoir about pregnancy loss, infertility, uncertainty, and coming to terms with how much control we have – and don’t have – over our own bodies.

Inspired by my childhood on the California coast, and using the swimming pool as a backdrop, the book asks questions of geography on the most intimate scale. How can we learn to be at home in our own bodies, even when we feel adrift from them? What language do we have for the spaces in between, the periods of wanting and waiting? And how do we maintain hope as we navigate towards an unknown future?

Praise & reviews

‘Adrift states, repeatedly, how often we lack the language for such events, but Ward conveys with exquisite precision how the physical and spiritual connect, probing the intimacies of her own body with fiery experience… Let us continue the conversation, however hard; a conversation that Adrift will, surely, be a vital part of for many years to come.’

– MARIANNE LEVY, The i

‘Miranda Ward is a truly incredible writer and one who carefully and beautifully reflects on "almost motherhood". It's a space that so many of us experience but so often we don't have the language to communicate just where that is’

– FRANCESCA BROWN, Stylist

‘ADRIFT is, quite simply, the best book on its subject I have ever read. Miranda's thoughtful, sharp, insightful, funny, brave, honest and often painful writing on fertility has given form and life and language to something fundamental and universal. I wish I'd had it years ago. I'm so glad to have it now. The clever use of structure, the humour, the feather light touch of her narrative voice; it is the sort of book that makes you wish you were a better writer. I have no doubt it is going to help a lot of people and touch many more’

– NELL FRIZZELL, author of The Panic Years

‘Miranda Ward captures the visceral hopelessness of infertility, and an ambiguous but mostly-unspoken space that many women unwillingly occupy forever. She never flinches from the pain, and because of this her tender book will be precious to many readers’

– JEAN HANNAH EDELSTEIN, author of This Really Isn’t About You

‘Finally, the important and interesting subject of almost-motherhood is given due attention. ADRIFT is a crucial, precious book by a writer with a wide-ranging intellect, beautiful prose and an astute and refreshingly honest voice. I was hooked by it, and fascinated by the layers she weaves as she moves the topics of fertility and pregnancy loss into the light. ADRIFT will be a balm and a relief for many women, longing for a book that takes such a major and common life experience seriously and gives it the thought and care it deserves’

– LUCY JONES, author of Losing Eden

‘I was both captivated by Miranda Ward's story and impressed by her attention, perspective and understatement. Her experience of "almost motherhood" is told with truth and clarity in a way that will be a comfort to some and a revelation to others’

– AMY LIPTROT, author of The Outrun

‘It's long past time we stopped tip-toeing around the subject of miscarriage and started to acknowledge the difficult space between pregnant and not and all the emotions that live there. (Contrary to common belief, you can in fact be a little bit pregnant). Miranda Ward gets the conversation started in this thoughtful, beautifully-written, devastating exploration of the will to reproduce and the wildness of the body. This is a vastly important and necessary book’

– LAUREN ELKIN, author of Flâneuse

 Press

  • Times Radio: Interview with Mariella Frostrup (from 2 hrs 38 mins)

  • BBC Radio London: Interview with Salma El-Wardany (from 35 mins)

  • Daily Mail: Serialisation

  • The Telegraph: ‘Not talking about my struggle to conceive made me a bad friend’

  • Stylist: Best new non-fiction books for 2021

  • Red: ‘How trying to get pregnant prepared me for living through a pandemic'

  • Grazia: ‘I Think Of The Pregnant People Who Have Been Consumed By Worry Or Overcome With Joy, Whose Hands, All The While, Have Gone Unheld'

  • Metro: ‘If you are struggling with infertility, this book will help you feel less alone’

  • The i Paper: ‘Adrift, by Miranda Ward: a brave exploration of the grief and viciousness of infertility’ (review)

  • The i Paper: ‘Fieldnotes from Almost-Motherhood: “The experience of waiting to fall pregnant was not what I was expecting”’ (extract)

  • Longreads: ‘The Geography Closest In’ (extract)

  • Mint Velvet magazine: Interview

  • The Panic Years podcast: I think they’ve lost it, with Miranda Ward

  • The Finally Pregnant podcast: Pregnancy during a pandemic with author Miranda Ward