Writing
My writing
I’m a writer and UKCP-accredited psychotherapeutic counsellor.
I write non-fiction and fiction.
I’m the author of Living Well With Pain and Illness: write your own road map to healing in tough times (Orion Spring, 2024).
I’ve contributed essays to:
A Women’s Wales: The Dissonance and Diversity of Devolution through the Lives of Women In Wales (Parthian, April 2024).
An Open Door: New Travel Writing for a Precarious Century (Parthian, May 2022).
My work has been published in publications such as The Guardian and The New Statesman.
I explore cascading collective trauma, community care, collective liberation, otherness and embodiment.
Education & Awards
I have studied memoir, journalism, creative non-fiction and fiction.
I’ve been lucky enough to study with teachers including Lidia Yuknavitch, Lilly Dancyger, Lily Dunn, Terese Mailhot, Alexander Chee, RO Kwon, Cathy Rentzenbrink, Tin House Winter Workshop and many more.
I have a degree in history, specialising in medieval women’s and gender studies, where I studied the work of early women writers and the querelle des femmes.
My awards include:
The London Library Emerging Writers Award, 2021/2022
A Writing Chance with Michael Sheen, 2021/2022
Curtis Brown Creative Breakthrough Award, 2022
Representing Wales Award, 2023/2024
I have been shortlisted for:
The Nan Shepherd Prize, 2021
The Writers’ & Artists’ Working-Class Writers' Prize 2021.
I have also been awarded residencies at iconic institutions including:
Ty Newydd, National Writing Centre of Wales with the Francis Reckett Award.
Hawkwood Artist Residency programme at the Centre for Future Thinking.
Representation
Literary Agent:
I’m represented by Abi Fellows at DHH Literary Agency.
Selected Publications
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My therapist couldn’t see how class shapes lives (New Statesman)
Common Experiences and Responses to Data: My Relationship to Data as a Trauma Therapist (South West Creative Technology Network)
Occupied Country: Marginalised Bodies in Virtual and Physical Walesbodies-in-virtual-and-physical-wales/ (The Welsh Agenda, Institute of Welsh Affairs)
Disruptive Bodies and Unruly Words: my first writing residency (Literature Wales)
Self-Help for Queer Lockdown: Coping Without Community (Talk To The Rainbow)
People Can’t Cope With My Happy Disabled Love Life (The Metro)
On the edge: the coronavirus crisis has shifted many more people to the margins of society (The Fabian Review Online)
I burned my pyjamas and volunteered for the largest health board in Wales (Guardian)
La Belle au Bois Dormant: on Dissociation and Resilience (The Unexpected Shape)
When It Hurts More Than You Can Bear (Positively Positive)
Yoga: My Thread to Follow, Home and Beyond (Marianne Elliott)
What do I say? Writing to Someone with Illness or Griefor Grief (Pretty by Post)
I Have Found Ways (Second Firsts)
Strength in the Tenderest Places: You Are Not Broken (Christy Tending)
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A Women’s Wales: The Dissonance and Diversity of Devolution through the Lives of Women In Wales (Parthian, April 2024).
An Open Door: New Travel Writing for a Precarious Century (Parthian, May 2022).
When Bodies Break: How We Survive and Thrive with Illness and Disability (2019)
Thirteen Moons: Book of Women’s Wisdom (2018)
Radical Self-Love Almanac (2016 and 2017)
Watch Her Thrive: Stories of Hope, Courage and Strength (2013)
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Living Well With Pain and Illness: write your own road map to healing in tough times (Orion Spring, 2024).
Living Well With Chronic Illness: Write your own road map to healing in tough times
(Orion Spring, 2024).
Living well with pain might seem like a contradiction in terms, but for many of us, escaping the land of chronic illness is a reality we’re continually striving for.
However, it may well be proving more difficult than we had imagined. After all, if getting well were as simple as following our doctor’s advice, we’d all have done it long ago.
We’d be spending our days enjoying meaningful work we love, hiking to pretty waterfalls, reading novels and eating big dinners with friends or whatever we most need and love.
In Living Well with Chronic Illness, we’ll:
Map your current experience
Learn to reclaim your agency in a crisis
How to self-advocate effectively
Get clear on picking up your power and seeing your possibility.
We’ll learn how to tend to our energy ecosystem
Plot ways of building routes to your resources
This is where the shifts you’ve made meet your daily routine.
If you are interested in commissioning a piece of writing, essay, or guest article.
Or if would like to re-publish a piece of my writing, please get in touch via the form below.
Thank you for your interest, I look forward to working together.