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.

Beerstorming

Image Copyright Rachel J Fenton 2020

In late 2016, I was awarded a significant arts grant by Creative New Zealand to research, write and draw a graphic biography of Mary Taylor, Charlotte Brontë's best friend. My research was scheduled to take me to Wellington, where Taylor lived, wrote and ran a successful business for the best part of the fifteen years she was in Aotearoa New Zealand, but an earthquake in the capital meant I had to defer that trip and instead I flew to New York in early 2017. As well as the usual notes and photographs, inspired by the astonishing city New York is, my research also took the form of poetry. 

I am over the moon to share the exciting news that Sara Lefsyk and Joanna Penn Cooper are going to publish the resulting chapbook with Ethel Zine and Micro Press. 
Beerstorming with Charlotte Brontë in New York will be published in April 2021!

 Cheers!

Frilled

Thrilled (or should that be frilled?) to have my review of Andrea Quinlan's debut poetry chapbook, We Speak Girl, in the latest issue of Melusine. 

Massive thanks to editor, Janelle Elyse Kihlstrom.

First speak

A huge shout out of congratulations to Andrea Quinlan whose poetry chapbook "We Speak Girl" will be published by Dancing Girl Press in 2012.

I can't wait to read it!