Photo: @joshuajonesphotos

What I do

My experience as a migrant, community organiser and campaigner has taught me the power of stories to foster mutual understanding and heal communities.

In 2021, I wrote This Is Not Who We Are, a novel inspired by my childhood pen-friend Victoria, that drew parallel between the use of language to dehumanise people today and the events that led to the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda. It was a way to reach out to people from all walks of life and engage into a conversation about what it means to be a migrant in Britain today.

I went on to write Assimilation, a novel about what it means to belong, the forces shaping how we perceive the world, and the impact others’ perception can have on our sense of self.

Creative Practice

As a writer, I explore questions of belonging and the ethics of representation. I am interested in the tensions between language and experience—what can be said, and what resists articulation. I am weary of fixed definitions, boundaries and categorisation and fascinated by the idea words and their meaning are constantly evolving.

Intent on cutting across genres, my second novel was described as ‘thriller meets magic realism’. After an experiment on the role poetry can play in healing the self, which led to a series of wonderful community-workshops, I have retreated to focus on a memoir. After much reading and percolation, I am currently writing.

Sector Development

I am passionate about increasing the visibility of new and existing talents, nationally and internationally.

I have taught Creative and Critical Writing at Cardiff University and Cardiff Metropolitan University, and continue to support artists through mentoring. I translate poems into English for magazine The Other Side of Hope, to increase the visibility of francophone writers seeking refuge.

Cultural Resilience

I aim to contribute to a more transparent, resilient and sustainable cultural ecosystem in Wales.

I represent authors on the Society of Authors Cymru Committee; support arts organisations as Head of Arts for charity Arts & Business Cymru; and support the development of Folding Rock Magazine as Advisory Board member.

My Personal Journey

A migrant from a diasporic family, I am drawn to the spaces where different worlds meet. I spent two decades working in campaigning and education before becoming a writer, and I now split my time between writing and supporting arts organisations.

My work is deeply shaped by migration, multiculturalism and motherhood, and what I coined in my academic research as Identité-mosaique,

the positive accumulation that happens as we traverse space and time and which renders our identity fluid and borderless, untethered from the socio-political constructs of the nation-state, instead deeply steeped in creativity, imagination and what James Clifford called travel as culture.

I am guided by an ethics of social witnessing and much of what I write is concerned with connection: how relationships are built, how understanding is shaped, and how we can bring ideas into action.

Writing, for me, is a tool to erase boundaries. As we engage with the characters in a story, we share, connect and empathise with the lives of others and grow our mutual understanding.