New Writing

Since graduating from UEA’s Creative Writing MA in 2004, Emma Claire Sweeney has won Arts Council, Royal Literary Fund and Escalator Awards, and has been shortlisted for several others, including the Asham, Wasafiri and Fish.   Emma publishes features and pieces on disability for the likes of the Guardian, the Independent on Sunday and The Times. She teaches creative writing at New York University and co-runs SomethingRhymed.com – a website on female literary friendship.   Emma’s debut novel, Owl Song at Dawn, will be published by Legend Press in 2016. It is the story of fiercely proud seventy-nine-year-old, who has spent her lifetime in Morecambe Bay, trying to unlock the secrets of her exuberant yet inexplicable twin. Through their experiences, the novel explores the UK’s hidden history of learning disability from the 1930s to the present day – a subject very close to Emma’s heart since her own sister has cerebral palsy and autism.   A Secret Sisterhood: The Hidden Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot and Virginia Woolf, which she is co-writing with her own friend, Emily Midorikawa, will come out in 2017 with Aurum Press in the UK and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the USA.   Emma is represented by Veronique Baxter at David Higham Associates.   Twitter with @emmacsweeney.   Website: www.emmaclairesweeney.com