Daughter of the Quiet Fire
My current manuscript is a collection of linked memoir essays exploring belonging, memory, identity, perception and the long process of learning to trust what we know.
Moving through childhood, psychiatric nursing, marriage, motherhood, therapy, spiritual seeking, rupture and return, the collection asks what happens when inherited stories begin to fall apart - and what becomes possible when we stop abandoning our own perception in order to preserve them.
The manuscript is complete and currently being submitted for publication.
Proposed cover concept
Breast is Best
Breast is Best is a long-form creative nonfiction essay exploring the female body, shame, visibility, sexuality, ageing, cultural expectations and the peculiar theatre of breasts.
Part memoir, part cultural excavation, it moves between adolescence, family, fashion, desire, embarrassment, humour and the many ways women are taught to experience their bodies through other people’s eyes.
The essay is complete and currently being submitted for publication. It will form part of a second collection of creative nonfiction.
On 1st November I’ll be attending a Glifting competition at MECA Swindon as part of research for a long-form feature on the sport, its culture and the women helping to shape it.
Hannah Evans, a Glifting competitor, has described the sport as: “Think bodybuilding meets Victoria’s Secrets” - a phrase that captures something of its theatricality, athleticism and the challenge it poses to conventional ideas of femininity.
The piece will explore Glifting from the inside: its competitors, aesthetics, training, community, tensions and ambitions, as well as the wider cultural questions it raises around strength, display, femininity and who gets to define what a powerful female body looks like.
I’ll be speaking to competitors, organisers and others involved in the sport as part of that research.
If you have experience of Glifting and would be interested in contributing, please get in touch.
Hannah Evans, Glifting competitor
