1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Like lots of writers, my literary career hasn’t been linear and has taken me across countries, genres and languages. But each book, essay and prize has changed my life. When my first novel l’île sombre was published in France I toured around literary festivals with great interviews and events and it felt very much like coming home- finding my people. My acclaimed memoir, Home Is Where We Start: Growing Up in The Fallout of The Utopian Dream is the story of my utopian commune childhood, so the publication was more emotional but equally exhilarating. The book was published by Penguin and attracted huge press/media coverage, and was reviewed in all the UK newspapers: the Times, Observer, The Mirror, The Spectator, the TLS etc. I feel very lucky.
The Orange Notebooks has taken me back to the world of fiction ( I actually wrote it before my memoir but it came out afterwards). It’s the story of a mother coming to terms with the loss of her child. I am really happy to have this book out in the UK and North America, as an exploration of the persistence of love in the face of loss. With all my books I am drawn to the tragedies of being human but also our incredible capacity for love, humour and hope.
2 - How did you come to memoir first, as opposed to, say, fiction or poetry?
I write essays, shorts stories, novels and non-fiction, and have also written plays. However, since I was young I’ve been inspired by visual artists like Charlotte Salmon, Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin who make work linked to their life. I don’t think of it as a therapeutic process, rather that the realities are closely bound to each other. I love writing non-fiction and fiction, but they are different forms to me.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
I am a very productive writer and rarely suffer from writers block, so I produce a lot of work fast. However I edit and redraft a lot. When I wrote The Orange Notebooks I knew the beginning and end - but not what happened in between. I needed to write to find out the story but also get to know the characters and discover the themes. Many readers comment on how layered my books are, and I think that is a reflection of the process.
4 - Where does a work of memoir or fiction begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
From the start, I tend to know whether a piece will be book, short story or an essay. However, I do like using shorter forms to experiment and play with an idea. My memoir, Home Is Where We Start, was originally an essay: The Utopian Machine (Aeon), that went viral in 2022. Parts of The Orange Notebooks were based on experimental prose poems that I performed for Sagam Poetry reinterpreting the Orphic myth.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
As I trained in Drama, and worked as an actress I really enjoy readings and have made performance pieces based on my work. I love the spoken voice.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
I suppose I am trying to look at what it’s like to be alive, how we juggle rational and irrational thought, life and death, conflict and love, looking after this green planet? I wonder what it was like to be alive one hundred or a thousand years ago and the difference today. I want to explore what makes us human.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I think the role of the writer is to write about what moves you, and to be open to the world and what is happening today in all its horror and its glory, and write about the things that make your heart beat faster.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I find it essential to work with editors and feel privileged to have worked with some amazing people. With each editorial process I feel like I learn more about my writing. Fresh eyes on a text are vital.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Read to write.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (memoir to essays to short stories to the novel)? What do you see as the appeal?
I see it all as writing, but one form can definitely stimulate the other. For example, in The Orange Notebooks I include factual information about bees, colours, trauma and other themes and learnt from my memoir about how to weave information into a braided narrative.
11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I am writing full-time at the moment, and tend to dither first thing, check emails, make coffee, drift… Then once I get started I’ll write for about 4-5 hours. I don’t like to eat too much ( or like Borges only very plain food so it doesn’t distract me), so I just focus on the words. Similarly I only use brown notebooks. If I am writing a first draft, I try to finish the day at a point where the story is exciting, so I’ll feel motivated when I start the next day. If I’m editing I’ll try to get to the end of a chapter. I give myself small goals to achieve and that keeps me moving. I also love, love, love working in libraries. I wrote a lot of The Orange Notebooks in my local library.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I read a lot, and if I have a writing dilemma I’ll go for a long walk. I developed this practice during a residency in a Scottish castle where I edited The Orange Notebooks – asking myself one question about my manuscript, and then walking and thinking, and an hour later I’d usually found the answer.
For all stages, I often use visuals hand-drawn aids like charts, mind maps – I love Sellotape and coloured pens. This was really useful with The Orange Notebooks as the novel is made up of a fragmented diary entries with time shifts, so it was important to keep track of the balance within the novel.
I find switching from screen to paper very helpful to undo writing problems. I write by hand and using a computer. I teach a course with London Lit Lab on how to use other art forms to unblock writing.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
The smell of books.
14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Everything feeds into my work, but probably visual art, science and philosophy have the strongest influence. These are intertwined in the narrative of The Orange Notebooks. As Anna, the heroine, navigates grief and trauma, she and those around will turn to science and particularly neuropsychiatry to try and understand her behaviour. The book references the visual arts through Anna’s obsession with colour and what she describes as “the duplicity of beige”, and philosophy as an attempt to understand disaster. She also becomes obsessed with bees and climate change as a metaphor to her own tragedy.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
In parallel to my
writing, I’ve worked in state hospitals for most of my life as a clinical
arts-therapist, supervisor and lecturer. It’s given me a huge sense of meaning
and also a great humility about life in general as for both staff and patients being
and working in hospital requires daily management of disaster and suffering. Hospitals have taught me to engage with hope,
because, as André Malraux says, without hope you cannot breathe.
This work has been a major
influence on The Orange Notebooks as a book reclaiming the lost language of
mourning. Many end-of-life doctors and carers now recognise, and as Anna
writes, “We needed to keep death in life. We couldn’t banish
it underground. But we had to connect with each other, make our own new
stories, mix the living and the dead. Invent our rituals. Embrace it all. “
16 -
What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I’d
like to do a sabbatical year teaching writing in a university abroad ( please
invite me – I will come!). I love teaching! I also have a zillion books in my
mind that I need to write, and am currently writing full-time.
17 -
If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or,
alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a
writer?
Sometimes
I think I would like to have been a spy. I love being in cities on my own,
incognito.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I taught myself to read when I was
about three and a half and have written and read since voraciously since I was
small child. However, I’ve also worked as an actress and been involved in
visual art and performance, and work in hospitals. But really writing is at the
core of everything. In The Orange Notebooks, Anna and her husband are also avid
readers. She writes, “We knew that once you were inside a
single book it led to other books. Each single book was a library, a universe.
Long ago, word after word fell in a delicate rain, and the words became a lake
from which we drew our water.”
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I am currently a judge for the Queen Mary Fiction Prize for Small Presses so am reading some amazing books but sadly I am sworn to secrecy so I can’t tell you about those. As part of my research for my next novel, I just finished A Place of Greater Safety (set during the French Revolution) by Hilary Mantel – It’s 900 pages long, but brilliant to understand how idealism and brutal political reality co-exist.
20 - What are you currently working on?
I am working on two books: a non-fiction book about care, a kind of a collective hymn to the invisible acts that keep us all afloat, and a historical fiction novel set during the period of The Terror in the French Revolution. The latter is a page-turning adventure, set between France and the UK focusing on how everyday people navigate periods of violent political upheaval.
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