Text prize

I'm totally stoked to have made the shortlist of 7 out of hundreds of entrants to the Text Prize for YA and Children's Writing!

Nuala O'Connor interview

I've loved Nuala O' Connor's writing since first encountering her through blogging way back in 2009. She helped me get my first flash published and has been a steadfast supporter of my work since. I was thrilled to stupidity to meet her in real life in 2018, and her star has risen and risen, so I'm absolutely chuffed she's interviewed me about Beerstorming with Charlotte Brontë in New York as part of her 'Writers at Work' series on her website at a time when her acclaimed biographical novel NORA is taking critics by storm.

Petter pending

Perhaps the best compliment a writer can receive is that their work inspires that of another. The author of the fictionalised memoir All the Beautiful Liars, Sylvia Petter, has written this creative non-fiction response to Beerstorming with Charlotte Brontë in New York, and she's got another response pending publication.

Gage interview

 

The Berg Collection Reading Room at New York Public Library. 

 

June is Pride Month! So happy that radical lesbian playwright, actor and activist Carolyn Gage interviewed me about my debut poetry pamphlet Beerstorming with Charlotte Brontë in New York, and we also talked about Betweenity, my graphic biography of Mary Taylor, and so much more.

Leicester uni-storming

My thanks to Dr Jonathan Taylor for posting about Beerstorming with Charlotte Bronte in New York on the University of Leicester Creative Writing Blog.

Beerstorming

 

 

It's publication day - my debut poetry chapbook is here! 

My grandest thanks go to my brilliant publisher Sara Lefsyk of The Ethel Zine and Micro Press for making this dream of mine come true! Sitting up all night on the settee with a two month old on my breast when I submitted my poems, publication seemed as elusive as sleep. I'm forever grateful to Sara for bringing my chapbook into the world.

YA listing

Could not be more stoked to have the news that the YA novel I wrote over lockdown last year made the long-list of 12 out of over a hundred entries for the Michael Gifkins Unpublished Novel Competition. It's my second time in this position, having also had Some Things the English, the novel that placed second in the Dundee International Book Prize, in the long-list in the inaugural comp.

Guardian Books

 My mini review of Becky Manawatu's Auē is in The Guardian.

Disquiet

 

"Thank you for submitting to the 2021 Disquiet Literary Contest. We received over a thousand entries for this year's contest, many of them of exceptional quality. While we're sorry to say that your entry was not selected to be one of this year's winners, you should know that out of an impressive pool of work, yours made it all the way to the final judges on the shortlist.

In fact, our readers thought your entry skillfully wields the simplicity of its images to make for a vivid, enveloping reading experience. Rather than stretching language through syntactical feats, you trust the humble sentence to relay meaning in a way that is effective and clear. The world exists in your poems from the first line. The pacing [...] is emblematic of what these poems manage to do: make us feel, in transit, that we’ve found some stillness. We hope to see much more of your work in the future."

Fairly stoked to receive this feedback on top of my shortlisting! 

In the bath

 Astonished that my story is in the Bath Flash Fiction Award shortlist - thank you so much BFF!

Bath bonus

I'm stoked to have a story included in the longlist of the Bath Flash Fiction Award, a bonus of which being that it will also be included in the anthology. My thanks to the judges.

Miscarriage

Many thanks to Beate Sigriddaughter, for including my poem 'Miscarriage' in Writing in a Woman's Voice.

Everywhere is

Stoked that my graphic non-fiction 'Everywhere is Now' has been picked up by WordCity Monthly. My thanks to the Editors.

On entering

 I'm absolutely thrilled that an essay I wrote back in April, during NZ's lockdown, is published on The Clearing today. Ostensibly about hedgehogs' colonial history, it also includes a mention of my darling rabbit Thunderstorm, who was tragically killed by stray dogs in October, so it brought back some bittersweet memories. I've long admired The Clearing and enjoyed the essays in particular. My sincere thanks, therefore, to Jon Woolcott and Little Toller Books for helping me realise a little writing dream of mine. You can read 'On Entering the Wrong Carriage' here.

Everywhere is now

 

 

In 2018, I was commissioned to write a Comic about war. The editor ended up being replaced and my piece didn't see the light of day, so I'm publishing it here because it seems pertinent to the current period. It was after all written in response to Trump. I had been in America for the first weeks of Trump's inauguration in 2017, researching my Mary Taylor biography, and saw first hand the women's marches protesting against his presidency and the clap-back of MAGA advertisements on TV. 

 

It's not agatha christie

Thanks to Dr Jonathan Taylor for including my review of Nigel Pantling's It's Not Personal (Smith | Doorstop, 2020) over on Everybody's Reviewing, not least because I got to indulge my love of mystery writing. If you want to know what Miss Marple has to do with Hannah Gadsby, you may only find it in this review!

Dregs

 

My thanks to Editor Christopher Fields for including my 'Dregs' at the end of this thoughtfully curated issue of Neologism Poetry, technically the last of 2020 spilling into the new year.