Dear Neighbour

Five strangers. Four weeks. One letter that will change everything…

My debut novel tells the story of Alice, a single mum living in Leeds, her next-door neighbour Bill, a widower still grieving his wife’s death a decade earlier, and the other residents of their street. It’s a novel about surviving austerity, the power of community and found family, and the real definition of home.

For me, politics, identity, creativity and community have always been interconnected, and Dear Neighbour is a love letter to all those impacted by austerity and housing insecurity, and to the necessity of resilience, resistance and empathy. You can buy it now in hardback, e-book or audiobook formats.

You can also read the interview with New Writing North, or listen to the letter to readers.

Order Dear Neighbour here

Truth or Dare

Featuring eight short stories and performance pieces exclusively collected together for the first time, Truth or Dare is a journey taking in illegal raves, toga parties, teen alienation, fear, activism and escape, featuring prophetic nightmares, pancakes, razorblade amnesties, freight trains, misadventures with punk drummers and losing your virginity to your best friend. By turns tender, intimate and furious, Truth or Dare explores the teenage experience through its authentic, multi-faceted characters and its distinctive use of voice, language, imagery and atmosphere. From playing spin the bottle and starting fires to surviving the end of the world, Truth or Dare is the first ever dedicated collection of my writing, and includes several original pieces never shared anywhere else until now.

Order your copy here

Performance Poetry Films

A found poetry love letter to queer clubs, women and toilet graffiti. A tribute to nineties slasher films and all the sexual confusion they created in an entire generation of horror-obsessed teens. A surreal, hallucinatory trip through the sleep-deprived world of working ‘anti-social hours’. Over the course of 2021/22, I was awarded a DYCP grant from Arts Council England to collaborate with director Sophie Broadgate and sound artist Synda Sova to make three short films based on my performance poetry: Lack of Daylight, Sexual Experimentation While Watching Scream and Latrinalia, which was also screened at Fringe! Queer Film Festival in London.

Watch them here

We're Made of Electricity

It starts in the heatwave summer. There are power cuts and no rain and we play out as long as we can, until Imogen and Amber go missing. Before we know about them, we are satisfyingly feral, roaming the estate until dark. There have been storms, on and off, and the air tastes of tin. On the park, there’s a burnt tree everyone says was struck by lightning. When the fat raindrops start coming, we stand underneath its blackened branches. Half believing it won’t hit the same place twice, half as a dare to the sky. We are defiant, soaked through and shivering in our thin summer holiday t-shirts, watching the clouds shift and churn. The rain, when it hits us, is like being pelted with coins.

Published in Test Signal by Bloomsbury & Dead Ink Books, July 2021

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Televised Revolutions, Then Noodles

She was spinning her chair in slow circles, consulting clipboard and phone at the same time, relaying a long update into her microphone. The staff for the next shift had arrived hours ago, earlier than they were due. They’d seen what was happening, of course, and knew they’d be needed. But by then we’d had the rumour that another wave attacks was coming, so no-one could go. Needed all the bodies we could get, so to speak. The death count was mounting and the atmosphere in the studio was tense and hectic. But there was something else, too: a sense of having a role in amongst all the horror and questions and chaos.

Published in Under the Radar, Autumn 2020

Order your copy here

You’ll also find fiction by me available in a range of literary journals and anthologies, including Dear Damsels, Lumpen, Litro Magazine, Popshot Quarterly, Crocus Books, Hic Dragones, Dog Horn Publishing and Pankhearst.

I love performing my work, and have been featured at all sorts of events, including performing at the Royal Albert Hall, the Royal Exchange, Polari Literary Salon, Contact Theatre, Superbia, Stockport Pride, Edinburgh Fringe and many more.

If you’re programming a spoken word event, I’d love to be considered: please get in touch to discuss.

You can also check out my YouTube channel to see more of me performing.

Contact me here