Once Upon A Dandelion Dream

What if all the stories I told you are true… especially the lies?

A writer and illustrator with a focus on magical realism, I’m fascinated by the concept of truth.

Who told you magic wasn’t real? Who told you this is how the world works? Who told you “supposed to”?

In my work, I use magical realism as a vehicle to deconstruct what we know to be “true” or “possible”, to deconstruct colonialism and capitalism and the patriarchy through viewing the world through a different lens.

If I change the way I see the world, the world changes.

I think that’s the importance and power of art. It allows us to see the world differently and challenge what we “know”.

I was a bookish child, who grew up wanting to be a writer. I took my first degree in English at Bangor University and later got my Masters in Creative Writing through the Open University.

Winner of the Cheltenham International Poetry Prize and a run of flash fiction competitions in my teens and twenties, I also wrote travel and lifestyle articles as a freelancer for a number of well known websites and magazines. While I now write primarily for this blog, you’ll occasionally find my work in Creative Non-Fiction publications like Hinterlands and Litro.

I started illustrating my work late on and still consider myself a baby artist. My fairytale-esque illustrations always have a whimsical, slightly feminist, gothic edge. I primarily work in ink. You can find some of them on the Sketchbook page.