I am an American writer living, loving, and learning in the UK. My writing has been published in literary journals and anthologies. My debut novel Remembered, was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction (2019), The Not the Booker (2019), and shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize (2020). Curdle Creek, my second novel, will be published in October 2024 (Henry Holt/Macmillan US and Dialogue Books/Hachette UK).

In 2017, I won a Northern Writers Award in fiction. I was also shortlisted for the Words and Women Competition (2017), the Sunderland University Waterstones SunStory Award in 2018, and awarded a Society of Author’s Foundation Grant for Remembered in 2018. I also write for children. I was commended for children’s writing in the Faber Andlyn BAME (FAB) Prize (2017), have three titles in Penguin Random House’s Ladybird Tales of Superheroes and I have three titles in the Ladybird Tales of Crowns and Thorns (Sept. 2020).

I have a dual-concentration MA in Writing from Johns Hopkins University and moved my family from Maryland to the UK to pursue a PhD. I have a PhD in Creative Writing from Lancaster University. I love empowering other writers and am the Academic Director of Creative Writing at Cambridge University. have been a British Library Eccles Centre Fellow and a Kimbilio fellow.

I love writing and telling stories. Writing is a form of advocacy. Writing helps me to be a better person. My writing typically starts with a question. When I’m very lucky, a character comes along to help me answer it. I write to understand the past, to make sense of the future, and to help imagine a more equitable tomorrow. I write to figure out what’s next.

When I’m not momming, writing, reading, creating literary events, teaching, and attending events (especially now with so many of them online), I’m recording audio or writing scripts I can read because I’d love to voice a villain one day.

If you’ve read Remembered I hope you enjoyed it. More than that, I hope it touches you.