BFS Online: Writing Your Way – The Influence of Experience

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The Influence of Experience: A discussion on how lived experience impacts the words and way we write. Why do certain stories matter more to us? How much of ourselves – our culture, history and language – show up on the page?

Join moderator Lee Murray and panellists Kev Harrison, E. Saxey, and Calah Singleton as they chat about why our background and knowledge make a difference. Find out more about our panel below.

Lee Murray (she/her): Lee Murray is an author, editor, poet, essayist, and screenwriter from Aotearoa. With more than forty titles to her credit, she is a five-time Bram Stoker Award winner, a Shirley Jackson Award winner, and recipient of the New Zealand Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement. Her latest release is prose-poetry collection Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud. Find out more about Lee on her website. You can also follow her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Threads or Bluesky. Treat yourself to one of her books at BookBub or Amazon.

Kev Harrison (he/him): Kev Harrison is a British writer of horror and dark fiction living in Lisbon, Portugal. His debut novel, Shadow of the Hidden, has recently been released through Brigids Gate Press. His novellas, Below and The Balance, are also available. His short fiction has been published in more than twenty magazines, anthologies and podcasts. You can learn more about Kev and his work on his website. Or follow him on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. Click the link to get a copy of Shadow of the Hidden, Below or The Balance.

E. Saxey (they/them): E.Saxey is a queer Londoner who works in universities and volunteers in libraries. Their first collection of short weird stories was Lost in the Archives from Lethe Press. Unquiet, their debut novel, is a Gothic tale set in Victorian London which wanders into folk horror in the West Country (Titan Books). Forthcoming fiction includes Quethiock by Night in The Crawling Moon: Queer Tales of Inescapable Dread (Neon Hemlock), which includes talking animals and sinister spinsters. Find out more about E. Saxey on their website or check them out on Bluesky. Click the links for copy of Unquiet or Lost in the Archives.

Calah Singleton (she/her): Calah Singleton is an American-British writer and a science fiction and fantasy editor at Hodderscape. She was a featured speaker at the Black to the Future Festival (founded by Irenosen Okojie) and the International Black Speculative Writing Festival (founded by Kadija Sesay). Calah was longlisted for the 2022/23 Penguin Michael Joseph Undiscovered Writers’ Prize in crime and thriller writing, and was shortlisted for the 2023 Future Worlds Prize for Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of Colour. She’s busy scribbling away at her debut novel, The Imperfect Charm of Wisteria Chumleigh, which is an enchanting combination of fantasy, cosy crime, and millennial disenchantment. Calah is represented by Stevie Finegan at Zeno Agency. Follow Calah on Twitter and find out more about her wishlist here.