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Editorial, Proofing, Print and Research Projects Involved In:

Sports Book Awards 2023; An Post Irish Book Awards 2022; Sheik Zayed Book Awards 2022; Alula Arts; James Cropper Wainwright Prize 2022; nb. Magazine; Storymix; Reboot, Rebuild, Reconquer by Nicola Walter and Christina Ioannidis; The Great British Gold Rush by Tim Francis; Greenpeace Social Media Campaign; RSPB Campaign; Noiser Podcasts (Time top 10 best podcasts of 2022); The Lover's Journal.

About Me

I am an Editorial and Marketing assitant at nb. Magazine and Agile Ideas. I am also a freelance writer and editor with a focus on the cultural sector, with a specialism in literature. I am always interested in new projects; if you wish to contact me, please use the contact form at the bottom of this page!

Literary Editorial

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Greek Lessons, Han Kang — nb. Magazine

Enigmatic and tender, Han Kang’s Greek Lessons feels abstract and aloof, suited to readers intrigued by lack of clarity, unconventional narratives, and the structures of linguistic systems.

Two individuals’ senses are dwindling: a young woman has lost her voice and a teacher of Ancient Greek is slowly losing his sight. The former’s understanding of language is beyond the ordinary, and she has lost her grip on words once before, as if overwhelmed by her own linguistic powers. She endeavours to t
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Cursed Bread, Sophie Mackintosh — nb. Magazine

With its eerie and uncanny feel, I began Cursed Bread beguiled into thinking it was a dystopian novel, only later to find out that it is based on real events. In August 1951, the small French town of Pont-Saint-Espirit succumbed to a mass poisoning; a scourge of illness and hallucinations plagued the town’s people and pandemonium and hysteria erupted; 300 people were affected, 5 died, and 60 found themselves in psychiatric hospitals. Scientists have argued that the most likely cause of the infli
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We All Want Impossible Things, Catherine Newman — nb. Magazine

To craft a novel about the final weeks of life in a hospice, filled at the same time with humour, life, and joy, feels like a near-impossible task. Yet Catherine Newman, debut adult novelist, has achieved it. In the same breath, Newman’s semi-autobiographical writing carries humour, wit and irreverence as well as searing loss, love and grief.

We All Want Impossible Things is the story of best friends Edi and Ash: Edi is in the final weeks of her life, terminally ill with ovarian cancer, and Ash
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Klara and The Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro — nb. Magazine

Reading a Kazuo Ishiguro novel feels a bit like stumbling around in the dark. As Ishiguro revels in withholding some crucial piece of information regarding his fictional world in question, readers are driven forwards by curiosity, grappling to uncover the unknown, propelled on by the expectation of the all-encompassing, illuminating reveal.

After reading a plethora of his work, Ishiguro’s writing pattern begins to feel very familiar. I have learnt not to trust his narrators, or at least, to rec
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Pachinko, Min Jin Lee — nb. Magazine

Min Jin Lee’s epic, sprawling tale of exile, race and identity spans almost 100 years, from the small fishing town of Yeongdo, off the coast of Busan, at the southern tip of Korea, to the bustling city of Osaka, Japan. Exploring immigration, diasporic identity, and ethnic discrimination for one Korean family across four generations, Pachinko navigates a fate this family’s cast of characters are unable to shift, try as they might to escape the socially construed confines of their identity in a co
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Milkman, Anna Burns — nb.

What does it mean to come of age during the Troubles?

Anna Burns’ 2019 Booker-winning novel Milkman - sharp, witty and abundant with rhetorical skillfulness - explores just that. Set in an unnamed Northern Irish city, a young, unnamed narrator navigates a cast of unnamed characters, referred to in colloquialisms such as, ‘Maybe-Boyfriend’, ‘Wee Sisters’, ‘First Brother-in-Law’, ‘Somebody McSomebody’, ‘Ma’, ‘Da’, and the foreboding ‘Milkman’. Burns refuses to acquiesce to names, labels, and poli
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Young Mungo, Douglas Stuart — nb.

Acclaimed Scottish author Douglas Stuart has an unparalleled ability to blend grit and beauty in his linguistic prose. In his second novel, Young Mungo, Stuart returns again to the east end of Glasgow, to streets filled with violence, addiction and unhappy childhoods. While the novel at first feels very similar to Shuggie Bain - it its setting, focus on alcoholism, the shadowy echoes of Shuggie’s relationship with his mother, the intensely felt local dialect - the novel gradually diverges away f
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Easy Beauty, Chloé Cooper Jones — nb.

Born with a rare congenital ailment called sacral agenesis, Chloé has lived her life on the margins. Doctors told her parents that she probably wouldn’t be able to walk, that she won’t be able to have children; her friends assume what she can’t do, angering her in their misplaced displays of helpfulness. These comments on her body, what is and what is not best for it, strip back her sense of autonomy. After a harrowing conversation between a colleague and his friend, Chloé is propelled to leave
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One for Sorrow, Two for Joy, Marie-Claire Amuah —

Stella tries very hard to be good. She tries not to be sassy, to answer back, to be noticed. Because when Stella's father is angry, it's like lightning and thunder and hailstones. All she can do is touch wood... or search for magpies. Two for joy.

Marie-Claire Amuah’s debut novel One for Sorrow, Two for Joy follows protagonist Stella from childhood into her early 30s as she experiences and confronts the trauma that has shaped her. Stella grows up with her Ghanian-born parents and her older brot
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Interviews

Sports Book Awards •

Elevating Women’s Sport: A Conversation with Alison Root, Editorial Director of Glorious Sport

Introducing Glorious Sport, an arts and culture platform dedicated to elevating women’s sport through stunning narratives and visuals.

“We give a platform to stories that deserve to be told and are carving out more space for female voices in sport, be that at grassroots or professional level. By using renowned writers, our compelling stories are complemented beautifully by world-famous photographers, artists and illustrators and engagingly brought to life through cutting-edge films.”

The team

Literary Prizes

Sports Book Awards •

Keeping the Ball in your Court: the Benefits of Children's Sports Books

Nelson Mandela once said, “Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does. It speaks to youth in a language they understand.”

It could be fair to assume that reading and sport are at odds: one involves sitting still and reflecting in quietness and solitude, the other, movement, body, team, and often, an abundance of noise. But sports books can be a great way to experience the thrills and sensation of the spor
Sports Book Awards •

Is it Worth It? Contact Sport and Brain Trauma

Contact sport is known for its thrills, risks, and at times brutal spectacle, but at what cost? Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, CTE, is a neurodegenerative disease associated with repeated blows to the head. Its troublesome and tragic symptoms include aggressive behaviour, depression, memory loss and suicidal thoughts. And as a progressive disease, the problems can begin long after the players have left the field.

From as early as the 1920s, CTE has been associated with contact sports such as
Wainwright Prize •

Reflecting on the 2022 James Cropper Winner's Ceremony at the London Wetland Centre

Last week, the Agile team gathered at the London Wetland Centre for the greatly-anticipated James Cropper Wainwright Prize winners’ ceremony. We were surrounded by swampish lakes, inky lagoons and marshes, interwoven by an intricate network of pathways and bridges.

From the centre’s sublime glass observatory, the wetlands swelled with wildlife, homing an abundance of critters and fowl. A kingfisher sheltered in the lagoon, snipes and sandpipers were spotted amidst the reeds, wagtails warbled. W

Long-form Newsletters

Transcriptions

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A Conversation with Yara Rodrigues Fowler — nb. Magazine

Could you let us know a little bit about what led you to this point in your writing career, and how did the process of writing there are more things begin?

My first book, Stubborn Archivist – a shorter book about three generations of women, starting in Brazil and ending up in London – focuses on characters who are all within the same family. So, for my second book, I was interested in what I could do with a much chunkier narrative, and how I could keep the reader in my novel for a longer amount
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A Conversation with Michael Pederson — nb.

First, could you tell me about the process of turning what started as quite a personal diary into what became a book? And as a poet, why and how did it manifest as prose rather than poetry?

So, I started writing the book in a place called Curfew Tower in Northern Ireland; it is an artist residency set up by Bill Drummond. People normally know him as the founder of the KLF, the big pop band, and a lot of people know him as the guy who burned a million quid on the island of Jura – you get publici
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A Conversation with Damian Barr — nb.

First of all, for all our readers who maybe don’t know about your work, would you be able to tell us a little bit about what you do and what brought you to where you are today?

Well, my life is books. It's writing my own books - I've written a memoir called Maggie and Me and a novel called You’ll Be Safe Here and lots of essays and pieces for different collections. My background is as a journalist; I joined the Times when I left University and continue to write for broadsheets. The other part o

Film Criticism at Inter:Mission

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A Search for the Bewitching: Films that Haunt this Halloween —

A mix of the new and newish – short reviews of the horrors and thrillers I’ve been watching at the eeriest time of the year.

Innovatively, director Rose Glass reimagines and plays off the horror genre in her impressive and highly aesthetic debut. The slow-pace was seductive, shocking at unexpected moments.

Maud, A devout Christian and carer, endeavours to save her cancer patient’s soul from eternal damnation. Possessed not by evil spirits (as conventional of horror), but by the spirit of God;
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Klaus: Class, Capitalism and Christmas Constructions —

Amongst the recent flux of Christmas films, the general theme seems to be the trashier the better. But amid the appalling Christmas romcoms and musicals is the 2019 Netflix gem Klaus. A feature-film debut for Sergio Pablos (who created the original story for Despicable Me), Klaus earnt an Oscar nomination for best animated feature film at the beginning of this year. If you’re tired of watching the decade-old plus classics, this is one not to miss.

Silver spoon-fed Jesper, son of Royal Postmaste
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The Pursuit of Love: A Love Letter to Female Friendship —

Melodramatic protagonist Linda (Lily James) is in love with love itself. She falls hard and fast, soaring on love’s wings in heady ecstasy only to plunge back to earth in a melancholy equally as intense. Linda lives by highs and lows, each new love felt as madly and as fervently as the last. Fully swept up in each new romance, she lives wildly through an array of partners. First up is sickeningly posh Tony Kroesig (a clear mismatch), followed by communist and Spanish Civil War fighter Christian
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Rare Beasts is a Defiant Anti-Romance —

Rare Beasts opens with Mandy (Billie Piper) on a first date with Pete (Leo Bill). Pete is obviously detestable; he openly despises women yet claims he can’t live without them. Mandy comments with crude, dark humour that he sounds like a rapist and admittedly, his anti-feminism is quite shocking and terrifying. Surprisingly though, the two enter into a masochistic relationship. One is left wondering, what is it that Mandy is seeking from this paternalistic figure? In one particularly revealing sc

Academic Work

Celebrity Cultures: Why are We Obsessed with the Narratives of Killers? Part 2 - Serial Killers

Contemporary western culture is hypnotised by the serial killer, and this crime-dazed, macabre culture bares a rich history. Foucault notes that, ‘throughout the whole second half of the [nineteenth] century, there developed a "literature of criminality", […] including miscellaneous news items […] detective novels and all the romanticised writings which developed around crime" .

The Spanish Civil War and War Documentation

With the corresponding modernisation of both warfare and filmic techniques, the violence of the Spanish Civil War was propelled to a hitherto unheard of, all-encompassing level; it impinged upon the civilian private sphere and opened the Spanish borders to the mediated outside world. Susan Sontag writes that ‘the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) was the first war to be witnessed (‘covered’) in the modern sense’ ; it was the beginning of a newly constructed mode of photographically driven, mass war documentation.

The Otherness of the Child in Peter and Wendy and Where the Wild Things Are

While Clement Ball argues that Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are represents ‘a radical break in the history of literature for children’ , it also holds much in common with J.M Barrie’s earlier text, Peter and Wendy . Different models of the child are embodied in the two, arguably the unconscious child and the innocent child respectively, representing their corresponding epoch’s construction of the child. Yet the otherness of the child - its fundamental difference and subservience to the adult - remains apparent in both works.

The Treatment of the Body and Embodied States in Dambudzo Marechera's The House of Hunger

Fanon’s statement that ‘the individual’s breathing is an observed, an occupied breathing’, signifies the all-inclusive nature of colonialism, and resultantly, the somatic level at which it is manifested. Dambudzo Marechera’s heavy use of the grotesque body in The House of Hunger expresses this corporeal level at which the legacies of colonialism operate and are felt in the postcolonial state of former Rhodesia under the leadership of Ian Smith.

Feminist Pieces for Lover's Journal, Chitè

Lover's Journal •

Lingerie in Movies: Who are Cinema’s Female Underwear Icons?

Underwear has the ability to symbolise and reveal so much: intimacy, sexuality, gender identity, liberation and power (to name just a few). Below, Chitè explores lingerie in movies through top 5 iconic underwear moments for the contemporary woman.

Olive Penderghast’s collection of tongue in cheek ‘A’ stamped corsets is the centre-piece of high-school comedy Easy A. With the aid of her boldly promiscuous lingerie, marked A for adulteress in echo of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Olive
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The history of corsets will never stop being so inspiring for women

“The corset is probably the most controversial garment in the entire history of fashion”, or so says renowned fashion historian Vallery Steele in her seminal work on the corset. Poised as a symbol of both female oppression and liberation at varying points over the last century, this torso-shaping, bustier-boosting hard-lingerie piece occupies a grey area of feminism. While the corset may have once been a constraining and homogenising underwear piece, it has more recently

Environmental

Travel Writing for Beau Monde Media

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Glyndebourne - the Quintessential English Opera Festival

Suited and gowned, opulent ladies and debonair gentleman picnic on the sprawling grounds of the Glyndebourne estate. With champagne in one hand and strawberries and cream in the other, the 90-minute interval of a world-class opera performance stretches out before them. Collars ruffle and swish skirts dance in the mid-may breeze as the courtly crowd soak up the golden-hour hues. It is a picture of quintessential, ‘prim and proper’ Englishness: croquet on perfect grassy lawns, flawlessly trimmed h