From Activist to Novelist: The Emotional Journey Behind Send Flowers
When I was a toddler, I told my mum that I wanted to ‘paint the flowers’. I didn’t mean I wanted to scrawl petals in childish brush strokes. I wanted to paint the actual flowers in our garden. I thought that they were so beautiful that some unseen artist must be...
‘Do These Stilettos Make My Debut Romance Novel Look Like an Agent of the Patriarchy?’ and Other Pressing Questions
If you’ve ever plucked your eyebrows then wondered if it was anti-feminist, welcome to my spirit canoe. It is a place of wanting cake and eating it off a strange cultural plate, where we get tangled in reclaiming our power and losing it in the same stroke. Beauty is...
Chloe Michelle Howarth Pride Reading Recs
Happy Pride! There are stacks of wonderful books that I could recommend you to read this month, but here are five of my favourites. This list has a little bit of everything, including joyous celebrations of queerness, the rejection of gender roles, and some of the...
Pride Month Recs – from books to bookshop!
Happy Pride Month! This month, we're recommending our favourite queer reads and which queer bookshop you should get them from based on your area! Lisa's pick: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (**spoiler alerts!**) - OK, OK so Taylor Jenkins Reid probably has a...
The Enduring Power of Intimate, Melancholy Sci-Fi
I want to spotlight a subtype of sci-fi: stories that take complex scientific ideas and ground them in the tender, the subtle, the specific, and the personal. They move us, gently yet insistently, to question what it is to be human. Here are a few of my favourite...
Sometimes Escaping Your Childhood is the Ultimate Action Adventure
There is a trope in Hollywood about the importance of trapping your characters. The idea being that when we feel trapped our behaviour is heightened, our choices get bigger and the stakes automatically rise. Perhaps this is why I’ve always loved reading and writing...
A Book Ten Years in the Making
I’m thrilled to be writing today for the Verve blog about my debut novel, Made for You, a speculative thriller that was ten years in the making. Okay, not literally. In point of fact, I drafted this book in 7 weeks, and from that version to its final form, it didn’t...
International Siblings Day
Happy International Siblings Day! We are bringing you the books with all the best depictions of siblings – get ready to add them to your TBR x The Color Purple by Alice Walker The events in this book literally wouldn't EXIST if it weren't for the main character...
Where are the Women?
Some years ago, I visited the Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur, India. It’s an impressive building, centuries old, set on the top of a hill. The main courtyard was where the business transactions, legal disputes and political strategy of the region took place. This area, we...
Trans, as in Water
According to the largest study conducted on trans and gender diverse youth in Australia (where I live), 48% of young trans people have attempted suicide. Put another way, almost one in two trans kids in this country have tried to kill themselves. One in...