Shirley Read-Jahn is an old friend or, more accurately, an old friend of my mother’s who I’ve also come to know and love over the years. If you’ve read my third novel The Secret Life of Alfred Nightingale, you’ll remember that my protagonist Jim hitchhikes to Matala in Crete where he spends some time living […]
This is a photo of me back in 2005, when I was twenty-seven years old. I had finished writing my first book, The Poet’s Wife (which I called In the Shade of the Orange Tree – this was later changed by the publisher) and my then-boyfriend-now-husband, Andy, was taking a photo of me posting my […]
In no particular oder, here are my top five reads from this past year, books that have stayed with me and I know will do for some time. I have three fiction here, one non-fiction and a travelogue. I’m not normally into anything vaguely dystopian, but this one reeled me in and had me hooked […]
Over the summer, a wonderful poet called Linda France did a call out entitled ‘Yours Sincerely: The Climate Letters.’ This was an invitation to use our pens and imaginations and continue the powerful work that words can bring to the ongoing ecological crisis. People were encouraged to write a letter – to anyone they like […]
Inspired by the publication of my poem ‘Colourless‘ with Writers Rebel back in July, along with a friend here in Norwich, we decided to set a local offshoot of Writers Rebel, a collective of writers and poets who could gather together in person to share and create work and plan events to raise greater public […]
My fourth book (and first non-fiction offering), winner of the Backlash Press prize for non-fiction, has been published! It’s not very easy to describe how it makes me feel to finally see this book in print. I’ve been working on it physically for about three years but far, far longer emotionally. This book is a […]
Last week I had a poem entitled Colourless published by Writers Rebel, a collective of writers under the Extinction Rebellion umbrella who believe in a duty to tell the truth about the climate emergency through the power of words and aim to galvanize actions to address it. This poem was one I wrote over my […]
I’ve written a fair few poems over the years, but I’ve never read one in public before. The thought of these things is often scarier than the reality, and I decided to submit a poem I wrote specially for Refugee Week following a call out for poetry and prose at a local Norwich venue. The […]
This may not sound very exciting, to have a short 300-word piece of creative non-fiction published in a magazine. But for me, it is a real triumph. Let me explain. I have been subscribing to Mslexia Magazine for about eighteen years, a fantastic women’s writing magazine filled with through-provoking articles on writing, plus a selection […]
For a few months now, my family and I have been putting our screens away from Saturday to Sunday evening. Everything goes into a locked box (yes, laptops, phones, i-pads, all of it) and I place the key in a hidden place in case it feels too tempting to take a quick peek. Have my […]