The Writer Laid Bare

Once upon a time, there was a young girl who was bed-bound on account of her sickly heart, and so she spent much of her time daydreaming or consuming the abundant fairytales in her family’s vast library. There she found …

When I set about writing my memoir Split, telling the story of my life with Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) – or as it’s called today, Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), I envisaged that it would be a mix of poetry …

As a child I only ever had two ambitions.

Being a writer wasn’t one of them.

Firstly, I wanted to be an artist, I’ve always loved drawing. And secondly, I wanted to ‘go to England’ as I’ve always been fascinated …

I am the kind of a writer who writes for sentences. It’s not because narrative isn’t important to me, but rather because I believe the shape and texture of sentences affect our narratives. The structure, rhythm and details of each …

During the writing of my new tragicomic novel, Never Look Desperate, I took the first draft of my completed manuscript away for a dirty weekend. To love it again and rediscover the connection. We stayed in a hotel with …

I began thinking about my fourth novel, Resistance – a novel about the craziness and steadfastness of family life – when I was undertaking a Masters in Family Therapy. Early in our training, we, the students, watched from behind a …