Falmouth Writing alumna shares insight into self-run magazine

You are now studying a PhD at Falmouth. What can you tell us about your experience? 

I’m finishing my first year of my PhD and my research focuses on the connection between witchcraft and queer identities, specifically Sapphic identities, and how these practices and identities intersect and are depicted in young adult literature. I’m focusing on how society’s historical prejudices against both queerness and witchcraft share commonalities, looking at the similarities in the interrogations of women in the witchcraft trials of the UK and the conversion therapy practices of 20th Century Britain. 

My supervisors on the PhD are fantastic: Amy Greenhough, Dr Jo Parsons, and Craig Barr-Green. They are lecturers who have known and supported me since my undergraduate studies.  

Getting to meet and network with new people on the PhD and attending and presenting my work at conferences such as Falmouth’s Sex, Scandal and Sensation conference last year, and this year’s Contemporary Women’s Writing Association conference, have been fantastic opportunities. Both have given me the chance to make connections and new friends in writing communities across the UK. 

You run your own magazine, Haunted Words Press. Can you tell us more about this literary endeavour? 

Haunted Words Press is a literary magazine published digitally and in print that includes tales of the gothic, peculiar, and the downright spooky for middle grade and young adult readers. The project started in 2022 and has since published ten digital issues and six print collections including three print-exclusive Pride collections.  

The Haunted Words Press has been an amazing project that I never expected to take off quite as well as it did. I’ve had the pleasure of reading and accepting submissions internationally, running masterclasses with young writers in The Writers’ Block (Cornwall’s writing centre) to publish their stories, and working with Falmouth students and alumni from courses including Creative Writing, Illustration, Graphic Design, Film, and Animation to get their work into the magazine.  

What has been your favourite thing about studying in Falmouth?  

I think if you study anywhere in Falmouth you’re going to be surrounded by creatives of different fields and specialities, and that’s instantly great for creative moral because if you hit a bit of burnout or a lull in creativity then you can turn around and see all this amazing work that everyone else is doing. 

I’ve found my community and people through studying at Falmouth, both on the courses I’ve studied and with friends who were on completely different courses but are now integral to my life here. Having a witchcraft museum a ten-minute walk away definitely helps my area of writing, as does having four different bookshops and bookshop cafes to wander into and spend a day romanticising your writing if you get stuck.  

Also, on the witchy side of things, there are a lot of cats in Falmouth, and they almost always want you to sit and pet them, and from someone who is still trying to get a cat and have a witchy familiar, that’s a fantastic bonus of living here. Being on campus when Monty (the Falmouth Campus cat) comes in is always a great day!  

Discover Falmouth’s communication degrees