Welcome to Lucy Writers, an online platform devoted to showcasing the writing of women and non-binary creatives.

Lucy Writers is an online platform showcasing the very best writing and artwork from women and non-binary creatives all over the world. In collaboration with Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge, the platform brings together past and current Lucy students as well as creatives from outside the college community. Lucy Writers welcomes submissions from women and non-binary writers irrespective of whether they’re an established or new-to-the-writing-desk writer. We want to hear from you; let Lucy Writers be the space, room and home for your words.

Dwaal by Irenosen Okojie

  Irenosen Okojie

In this courageous and powerful piece, Irenosen Okojie discusses the emotional abuse and exploitation Black women creatives have experienced in various arts industries and calls for greater accountability amongst white male perpetrators.

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An interview with author Siân Hughes: ‘the heart of the mystery is this dangerous ground of motherhood’

  Rym Kechacha

Rym Kechacha talks with author Siân Hughes about her debut novel, Pearl, the importance of medieval poetry to its themes, motherhood, grief and postpartum depression, and her research and writing process.

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Lucie Rie: The Adventure of Pottery at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge

  Julia Bagguley

Art historian Julia Bagguley gives an introduction to the extraordinary artist at the centre of Kettle’s Yard’s latest exhibition, Lucie Rie, and celebrates her almost alchemical ability to make stunning pots, buttons, bowls and vases.

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In conversation with Ennatu Domingo: ‘To belong somewhere new, you have to feel at peace with the place you left behind’

  Emily Walters

Our contributor Emily Walters talks to author Ennatu Domingo about the recent publication of her new book, Burnt Eucalyptus Wood, adoption and a nomadic sense of being, the centrality of language to identity, filmic narrative structures and the power of nostalgia in Ethiopian culture.

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Escape Room by Bryony Littlefair – deliciously absurd vignettes of the everyday

  Lauren Steele

In Bryony Littlefair’s poetic exploration of the everyday, the dreaded dinner party or 9-5 grind are brilliantly subverted to an absurd extreme exposing the anxieties and struggles experienced by all in a capitalistic, corporately ruled society.

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An interview with acclaimed author Dr Pragya Agarwal: ‘Men write smart thinking books and women are not taken seriously until they write a memoir.’

  Georgia Poplett

Our writer Georgia Poplett talks to scientist and author Dr Pragya Agarwal about what led her to write her latest book, Hysterical, the damaging history of gendered emotions, representation in data, subverting the classics and why the (feminist) future is bright – and furious!

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The Place of Memory/The Memory of Place: Pramila Venkateswaran’s Sthalapurana for Kochi

  Basudhara Roy

Creating a ‘fine latticework of sentiment and language’, Pramila Venkateswaran’s latest poetry collection, We are Not a Museum, resurrects place and memory to become a powerful sthalapurana for the city of Kochi and the lives of the Jewish peoples in it.

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In conversation with author Ashley Nelson Levy: ‘I wanted to write about the grief that comes with not feeling at home in your body and how your body can dictate the shape of your home.’

  Vartika Rastogi

Vartika Rastogi talks to acclaimed author Ashley Nelson Levy about her debut novel Immediate Family, the literary tropes and cultural narratives around adoption, motherhood, the body and female desire since the overturning of Roe v Wade.

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Voyager: The Constellations of Memory by Nona Fernández – a cosmic stellar tapestry

  Iona Glen

Nona Fernández’s new book, Voyager: The Constellations of Memory, translated by Natasha Wimmer, combines astronomy’s physics with astrology’s storytelling to express the importance of memory, family and record-keeping.

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The Deal: a short story by Laetitia Erskine

  Laetitia Erskine

The nuances and complexities of a troubled mother-daughter relationship are beautifully rendered in this short story, adapted from Laetitia Erskine’s novel Women on Women.

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Relative Change: a poem by Liz MacWhirter

  Liz MacWhirter

Elemental reactions spark a primal, protective dissolution and reformation of the female body, in this beautifully vivid poem by Liz MacWhirter.

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Formulating an Ethics of Vulnerability: Bhanu Kapil’s How to Wash a Heart

  Basudhara Roy

Bhanu Kapil’s award-winning poetry collection, How to Wash a Heart, argues for our essential and shared vulnerability as a global society, a keener acceptance of our physical, mental and cultural differences, and a more humane and humanistic social discourse, writes poet and scholar Basudhara Roy. 

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Riambel by Priya Hein: a sensual and deceptively simple evocation of generational slavery

  Laetitia Erskine

Priya Hein’s poetic, visceral novel addresses the devastating legacies of slavery, racial injustice and economic disparity in Mauritius, layering the stories of fifteen year old Noemi and those of her enslaved ancestors to lay bare the brutal realities of colonialism, writes Laetitia Erskine.

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A hunger to be free: James Hannaham’s Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta

  Vartika Rastogi

Hilarious, heartbreaking and unapologetically original, James Hannaham’s Joyce-inspired odyssey of a novel centres trans heroine Carlotta Mercedes and her experience of ‘re-entering society’ after 22 years of unjust incarceration.

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The Poet in the Machine by Kinneson Lalor and JP Seabright

  Kinneson Lalor

In their new collection Machinations, Kinneson Lalor and JP Seabright take inspiration from Alan Turing and the world of artificial intelligence, creating poems that are conversations not only between two poets, but between poet and machine. Here, they share their experiences when working on the collection, along with some of the resulting poems.

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Swanfolk: Strange swan-filled dreams in a near-dystopian future

  Jennifer Brough

This slim poetic prose novel by Kristín Ómarsdóttir and translated by Vala Torodds takes on larger-than-life themes in a world where the imagination bleeds into reality. 

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The Woman in the Bath by Emma Jones

  Emma Jones

In this beautifully meditative essay, Emma Jones reflects on Ithell Colquhoun’s painting, Scylla, the artist’s links to British Surrealism and how seeing the body as landscape takes us beyond our narrow borders into new realms of personal and collective freedom.

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Magic by Moonlight: Kirsten Glass’ Night-Scented Stock at Karsten Schubert, London

  Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou

Kirsten Glass’ enchanting paintings conjure alternate realms, invoke esoteric energies and summon nocturnal beings. In this creative essay, Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou meditates on the “obverse” side of her mesmerising work and its magical channeling of all things dark.

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Picturing Loss: On Francesca Woodman by Lisa Goodrum

  Lisa Goodrum

Heavy with heartache and loss, Lisa Goodrum turned to the haunting photography of Francesca Woodman to make sense of the pain and the blurry, achromatic period that was the summer of 2019. Here, in hauntingly beautiful prose, she tells her story.

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Beyond the Confines of Nell Brookfield’s Canvas

  Rachel Ashenden

Rachel Ashenden talks to artist Nell Brookfield about how her evocative paintings’ capture the strange in the quotidian and unleash the animalistic in the human.

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Your Retreating Shadow: poetry as a portal between conscious memory and subconscious dreaming

  Jennifer Brough

Rochelle Roberts’ speaker moves back and forth through the porous gateway of memory in an uncanny debut. 

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Sad Algorithm and other poems by Angel Dionne

  Angel Dionne

In these two compelling poems written using the surrealist automatism method, Angel Dionne creates strange imagistic worlds that quietly move as much as they unsettle.

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Peach Pig by Cecilia Knapp – a deep dive into the most vulnerable parts of ourselves

  Seraphina Edelmann

Peaches and pigs, softness and hunger, all crop up and are used to explore women’s relationships to their bodies in Cecilia Knapp’s raw and remarkable collection, Peach Pig, writes our contributor Seraphina Edelmann.

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An interview with award-winning poet Polly Atkin in Grasmere: ‘When is a cloud lonely in the Lake District?’

  Iona Glen

Iona Glen meets award-winning poet, Polly Atkin, to discuss her recent biography Recovering Dorothy, how Dorothy Wordsworth’s illness has been overlooked in academic scholarship, the marginalisation of those with chronic ill health, poems as time machines and much more.

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Becoming and Belonging in Claudia Durastanti’s Strangers I Know

  Vartika Rastogi

Claudia Durastanti’s luminous novel, Strangers I Know, traverses multiple identities, migrations and languages, and considers how ‘art can free an individual from difference, and difference from solitude’, writes Vartika Rastogi.

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