Moment of Curfew
One of my fractions: new fragmented fiction.At eleven the night city would tense and hush, would flinch silently for a moment. Then the low groan of the curfew siren looped wide, lassoing the skyline....
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Moment of Curfew
One of my fractions: new fragmented fiction.At eleven the night city would tense and hush, would flinch silently for a moment. Then the low groan of the curfew siren looped wide, lassoing the skyline....
View Article“Never forgive. Never forget.” 80+ homespun mottos for a wholesome existence.
Lucrezia Borgia meets Mother Teresa? Gandhi meets Machiavelli? A Chinese restaurant fortune cookie automated fortune printing machine meets the Ten Commandments? Here are my guides to life, inspired by...
View ArticlePatriarchy, we need to talk about vulval itching
Inspired by Jeanette Winterson’s Guardian article, Can You Stop The Menopause?I am writing this while pissing Samurai swords. When not pissing swords I’m managing to piss shards of broken mirror, whole...
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Leah Thorn, the poet and activist facing and transforming the lives of women...
Further reading: Inside: the power of books in prison, written by me for human rights organisation Liberty and based on my own prison work.I wanted to highlight the work of a heroine of mine, the poet,...
View ArticleInside: the power of books in prisons
This is in response to justice secretary Chris Grayling's ban on books and other items being sent to prisoners. This article has also been picked up, here, by the human rights and civil liberties...
View ArticleSaint Helen's 1957
They used to take left-handed girlsAnd tie that hand behind our backsWith lengths of cut skipping rope.Everything including floors and pipesWas bottle green, navy blue, teal,Mustard yellow, cream or...
View ArticleOn Europe, insularity and the UK's identity crisis
This is an extended version of an article written for the British Council....before Brexit.I’m currently away from home. Every morning I log on and read the news headlines, opinion pieces and arts...
View ArticleShouting down the facts and militarising against refugees
The following essay was published in two parts by Wasafiri Journal of International Literature this year. I began doing outreach work with refugees and asylum seekers three and a half years ago, before...
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Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
Commissioned by the British Library for their Discovering Literature archive of commentaries on 20th Century literature in English. View the original here.Midnight’s Children (1981) is a faux...
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Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier
Jamaica Inn was written in 1935 but set in the very early 19th century in Cornwall, between Bodmin and Launceston. The novel is at once a tribute to the impressive local landscape and an atavistic...
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An Untamed State by Roxane Gay
An Untamed State (2014) seems like a simple novel. The scenes are short, the language neat and supple, the cast and settings leanly described. It tells the story of Mireille Jameson, an American...
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The wolf tales in Angela Carter's short story collection The Bloody Chamber
This essay examines the stories The Werewolf, The Company of Wolves and Wolf-Alice in Carter's short story collection The Bloody Chamber. A shorter version was commissioned by the British Library for...
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Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) is a visceral riposte to Charlotte Bronte’s treatment of Mr Rochester’s ‘mad’ first wife, Bertha, in her classic Victorian novel Jane Eyre. Rhys reveals the horrifying reality...
View Article"A Dangerous Woman Is Truth Incarnate"
This essay was commissioned for The University of Edinburgh's Dangerous Women project which released 365 pieces of new work between International Women's Day 2016 and 2017. More details here.We live in...
View ArticleChina Flash: Writer Zhang Chao on media misogyny, China’s momentous social...
This is a greatly expanded version of an article which first appeared in Time Out Beijing.It took an earthquake to make Zhang Chao a writer. She is now an acclaimed journalist with nearly fifty...
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I watched the film Ex Machina. Here is the full cast list for men and women,...
M - CALEB - Late 20s, white, young, verbal, intelligent, gifted young programmer. Protagonist. Tall and thin. No nudity.M - NATHAN - Late 30s/early 40s, olive-skinned, charismatic, energetic, demonic...
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On Elle, Paul Verhoeven, rape and apologism
This is an extended version of my Guardian article from March 2017.Rape apologists: do you like the cinema? Have you always suspected that women secretly want to be stalked, brutalised and raped? And...
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