I work in the expanded field of narrative fiction. My work is process driven, incorporating art-based and conceptual approaches of juxtaposition, ekphrasis, bricolage, repetition, fragmentation, alphabetisation, concrete prose, repetition, text art, lists and inventory as well as working with the principles of recycling and upcycling, working with and through existing texts, as a means of narrativising and foregrounding the material, physical and spatial, and staying with the trouble of human-induced climate change.
I am currently working on a novel titled Debris Field about waste in the context of the climate crisis and the Anthropocene. Considering the question How is fictioning a good way of working into the climate crisis? I will employ art-informed narrative strategies of bricolage, collage and juxtaposition to embed Ursula K. Le Guin’s notion that “a novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us” (Le Guin, 2019), weaving narrative strands of a protagonist, waste, artworks and crows in order to effect a rhizomatic, relational impact which promotes a non-hierarchical “life story” as opposed to the hegemonic Hero’s Journey “killer story” (Le Guin, 2019).
Research and development was funded by an Arts Council DYCP Round 8 grant in 2021. Experiments from this project have appeared in Failed States journal, Tar Press, Seen From Here: Writing in the Lockdown, and Otoliths, as well as in group shows Now it is permitted: 24 Wayside Pulpits curated by Bridget Smith, at Swedenborg House, 2016, and The Wastemakers on Cornucopia Street, curated by Ian Dawson, at Newhaven Art Space, 2022 and as a fiction pamphlet, Waste Extractions, released by Broken Sleep Books in July 2022. Read a review here.
I was Runner Up in the Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize, 2023. My unpublished novel The Cremation Project was shortlisted for the inaugural Fitzcarraldo Editions Novel Prize (2018) and longlisted for the Dzanc Books Fiction Prize (2018). Individual chapters have appeared at: 3: AM Magazine and UEA New Writing. In 2020 I was shortlisted for the Manchester Fiction Prize and I won The Aleph Writing Prize .
Reference: Le Guin, U. K. (2019) The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. London: Ignota Books.
