During the summer holidays at the age of sixteen, I spent a heavenly six weeks grinding freeze-dried honeybees into powder in one of Warwick University’s science labs. I’d captured the bees myself, bedecked in a white suit and mask, from a local beekeeper’s wildflower meadow hives.
Once they were thoroughly decimated with a pestle and mortar, the powdered insects were poured into vials so their DNA could be extracted. I wanted to track down the honeybees’ origins. Not their recent Warwickshire origins, but their deep-time, historic ancestry.
Read the rest of this essay at the Royal Literary Fund’s website
Last week I was on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row with Samira Ahmed to review the new Apple TV show Extrapolations by Scott Z Burns, and the Royal Academy of the Arts exhibition Souls Grown Deep like the Rivers.
There’s still time to catch up on my current serialised novel The Loneliest Girl in the Universe, which is being sent out in tiny bite-sized chunks by email. Start here from the beginning.
Banner by Brogan Bertie
Very delighted to say that Green Rising was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal!
Upcoming events
If you watch the Great British Menu, you should make sure to watch the banquet episode this Friday – you might see a few familiar faces. 🙂
COVENTRY//16th April – ‘A Queer Guide to Medieval Storytelling’ – Coventry Queer Writers workshop at St Marys Guildhall (1-3pm)
OXFORD//2nd May – Panel with Natasha Pulley at Blackwell’s Oxford
Wren James 