I was very, very proud of my daughters, Eliza and Jesse, for their intelligent, powerfully articulated and thoughtful pieces in The Independent in April. Quite something, to be asked to write about your mother coming out. Quite something else, to do it as well as they have. What’s harder than telling your parents you’re gay? Your …
After an epic bus journey (six hours is nearly epic on our little island), the Bristol Pride event was hugely enjoyable, not least because of the enthusiasm and warmth of everyone I met. Real pride in their people, their Pride week, their friends, their city. Good pride. I ate a delicious supper in Cafe Kino upstairs, then …
I had a hugely enjoyable visit to Edinburgh in August 2010 to do an event with Emma Donoghue titled ‘Love and Trauma through a Child’s Eyes’. I was talking about Tell it to the Bees and Emma about her powerful and disturbing novel, Room. The children in our novels come in for very different kinds …
Took a lovely walk on Sunday with some New York friends. They’ve rented a tiny ex-fisherman’s cottage in Staithes for the week. We were going to walk over the cliffs to Runswick Bay, but when we got as far as Port Mulgrave we were lured down a steep path to the beach and we spent …
I spent a very enjoyable day in Derbyshire, at Shirebrook and Holymoorside, talking about and reading from Tell it to the Bees. My audiences were both of the best kind: appreciative (I always like that) and challenging. There were both readers and writers in the audiences and so some of the questions people asked were about …