Social Media, Appearances, and Events
It's mostly birds and writing prompts.
I also post interesting illustrations and other bric-a-brac I find in out-of-print books. |
Coming SoonExciting stuff in the works!
Stay tuned! |
Mapping Others' Texts, Mapping Our OwnAt the Once and Future Fantasies Conference, I presented the paper 'The (Re)Imagined Scottish Gothic of Hayleigh Barclay's Girl of the Ashes: An Outsider's Perspective' and facilitated the workshop 'Tearing Down Your Knee-High Fences: What Game Design Can Teach Us about Narrative Structure'.
The workshop explored how videogame design can inform our creative practice as writers. The paper analysed Barclay's imagined Loch Fala and how outsiders to a genre's core audience can still engage deeply and critically with the text even though not all of its tropes are as quickly or easily legible as they would be for core fans. |
Double, Double, Toil and Choose Your TroubleDr Victoria Shropshire and I cofacilitated the workshop 'Casting Interactive Spells: Using Witchy Narratives to Craft Twine Fiction' at the 2022 Visiting the Shadows Conference in Prague.
During the workshop, participants learned how to get started on their own interactive, witchy fiction using the free platform Twine. |
SMOL Fair
I appeared as part of a panel with other contributors from Archive of the Odd, where we talked about what inspires us as writers of speculative fiction.
We also had fun chatting about how we first became interested in writing speculative fiction and which types we feel drawn to read or write. |
Coding in Pandemic TimeBecause of the success of our hypertext poetry workshop at Oxford, Carly Brown, Erin Gannon, and I were invited to teach a new hypertext poetry workshop, 'Hypertext Time: Writing Poetry in Four Dimensions', at Glasgow's Stay@Home! Fringe Literary Festival.
In this workshop, we explored the role of time in interactive poetry and the way the poet can control the appearance, disappearance, and transitions of words and phrases in a way similar but not identical to a live performance. We examined the ways that the covid-19 pandemic has altered our perception of time, and we explored the possibilities of writing a poem into the future. |
Breaking the Rules
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They Chose FlameIn this August 2020 creative writing workshop, co-researcher Victoria Shropshire and I facilitated the interactive, branching '(Re)Claiming the Darkness: Creativity, Autoethnography, and (Re)Writing Trauma' at Signum University's speculative fiction conference Mythmoot VII.
While remote and online because of the pandemic, we still had a fantastic, fruitful time of creativity while wandering in the infinite darknesses of our own experiences. |
With Our Own VoicesIn these September 2018 interactive creative writing workshops in partnership with the Glasgow Women's Library, fellow writers Victoria Shropshire, Elaine Gallagher, and I used writing and other creative activities, including crafts and music, to help victims and survivors of oppression and trauma share, understand, and forge new written narratives.
A huge thank-you goes out to the University of Glasgow's Collaborative Research Award, which made these workshops possible! |
Dinosaurs, Play-Doh, and Social MediaI had a blast facilitating the multimodal workshop Victoria Shropshire and I developed, 'It Came from the Future! Integrating Digital Tools and Social Media into the Classroom', especially because such great creative work came out of the session at Eötvös Loránd University for the 2018 Digital Humanities Conference.
There was even a dinosaur cellist! |
Encouraging Students' #OwnVoicesIn May 2018 I travelled to Beijing, China to present my co-authored paper 'So Much More than Selfies: Twitter for Publication and #OwnVoices Narratives'.
I especially loved the tree sparrow fledglings in the courtyard! |
Dragons and Feminism and Fantasy, Oh My!Not only did I get to talk about one of my favourite subjects--YA fantasy--I also got to read a little from my novel at the 2018 Orientations Conference in Nottingham!
My paper, 'Our Castles Are Different: An Analysis of Fantasy Settings in Young-Adult Portal-Quests,' combined my critical research with my own creative writing. |
Here Be Dragons!I was delighted by the opportunity to present my paper 'Exeunt Stage Left, Pursued by the Patriarchy: Young Women Protagonists in Portal-Quest Fantasies' at this year's GIFCON--as well as chair the fascinating panel 'Category-Breaking Escapes' with papers by Mark Williams, Meghanne Flynn, and Elaine Gallagher.
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Policy Reform in EducationIn April 2018 I travelled to Ankara, Turkey to present my co-authored paper 'Filling in the Fun Parts: Interactive Fiction and Inclusive Education'.
And right outside the hotel was the oldest bridge in Ankara! |
Sustainability through EducationIn September 2017 I travelled to Kisii University in Eldoret, Kenya to present my paper 'TwitFic, Twine, and Student-Centred Learning: Combining Creativity and Coding in the Classroom'.
It was so exciting to meet my fellow researchers! |
IntersectionsFellow researcher Victoria Shropshire and I co-facilitated a creative writing workshop for the University of Glasgow's 2017 College of Arts 2017 Postgraduate Conference.
The focus of the workshop was multimodality and how it can jumpstart the writing process. |
Foxes of Glasgow Launch PartyI was invited to read at the launch party from my short story "The Phantom and the Fox," published in the anthology Foxes of Glasgow.
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Egad!I don't have any more upcoming events! Invite me to speak at your school, conference, writers group, or book shop so that I can add something here.
Give me the resources to do so, and I will sky-dive in for maximum entrance impact. |