Writing
I write novels, short stories, essays and performance poetry, usually about queerness, class, teenagers and trauma.
You’ll find links below to some of my published work. My first chapbook, Truth or Dare, was released in December 2021. My first, unpublished novel received the Northern Debut of the Year award from New Writing North. Most recently, I’ve been featured as a contributing author in The Modern Craft (2022), So Long As You Write: Women on Writing (2022), and Test Signal (2021), a ground-breaking anthology of the best contemporary Northern writing, published by Dead Ink Books and Bloomsbury. My debut novel Dear Neighbour is forthcoming from Sphere in 2023.
Dear Neighbour
Five strangers. Four weeks. One letter that will change everything…
My debut novel is forthcoming from Sphere in June 2023. It 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 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 real celebration of all those elements. With so many being impacted by austerity and housing insecurity right now, this novel is a love letter to the necessity of resilience, resistance and empathy.
Pre-order it now
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
Order your copy here
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
Bad Dream
That night, Lucy went to a party; two friends of hers who hadn’t gone to uni and got jobs and their own place instead. Tacky decorations everywhere; fairylights from the pound shop, silver-foiled chocolates in the shape of snowflakes hanging from a big plastic tree. Rebel, Rebel on the stereo and tinsel everywhere. Lucy drank gin and orange from a plastic cup under plastic mistletoe; wondered whether she’d ever kiss anyone ever again. Then she met Mel, in her silver wig and mismatched contact lenses to make her look like Bowie, glitter blizzarding from her eyelids with every blink as she asked Lucy if she wanted her tarot cards read.
Published in Popshot Quarterly, ‘The Chance Issue’
Order your copy here
You’ll also find fiction by me available in a range of literary journals and anthologies, including by Dear Damsels, Lumpen, Litro Magazine, 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, 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