Browse Literature

On translating a grief you didn't live through: I keep a list of words I'm not allowed to use in the target language. It's shorter than the list of words I'm forced to use.

My grandmother said you can tell a market by its noise. I've been writing that noise down for ten years. Next month's open mic will be the first time I read the whole notebook aloud.

A small confession: I wrote the first draft of my second collection in the back of a ferry. It's full of wrong turns and engine noise, and I kept the line breaks the boat made when it rocked.

Notes for emerging playwrights: write the scene where nothing is said, then cut the first line of every speech. Most of the good writing in my plays is a sentence I was too scared to keep.

Reading list for anyone who wants to write about a harbour without writing about the sea: start with the timetables, then the shopping lists, then the poems. Nobody believes this order, and it works.

The hardest note I've ever had came from a stage manager at eleven at night: the audience can't see your clever bit from the back. She was right. I've been moving the clever bits forward ever since.