Joining Sheffield Hallam in January 2019 as a Lecturer in Creative Writing and Creative Industries, Yvonne uses her role to empower her students and build relationships with wider communities. Despite only starting in the role a few months ago, Yvonne has some ambitious ideas to introduce to the department such as a literary salon which would be a monthly event hosted in collaboration with students, free and open for all to attend in the community, where the opportunity would be for any writer (official or otherwise) to share their work; this could be in the form of poetry, prose or music. The idea would be to have a space for people to showcase what they have been working on and get feedback from the wider community. Yvonne, who set up the successful North West Literary Salon in Lancaster, says that this is an excellent opportunity for her students to work on live projects, get feedback on their work and set them up with a portfolio for their future writing careers in whichever capacity that may be.
Yvonne’s would also like to set up a University publishing press; she questions the notion that there needs to be more diverse writers and concludes that actually those accomplished diverse writers already exist- it’s the representation and publishing opportunities that needs to be diversified. With this in mind, Yvonne hopes that setting up an in house publishing press, where the University already has experts in business, design and law, would be an opportunity to fill ‘not just a community need but a worldwide need’.
Yvonne has recently released her debut novel Remembered which is a product of the novel she first started writing as part of her PhD that she completed in 2017 at the University of Lancaster.
Remembered is the story of ‘Spring, an emancipated slave, forced to relive a haunting past in order to lead her dying son home’ and is described as Yvonne a ‘horror story’ where the opening scene sees a child stolen into slavery and a mother not knowing where her child is and not being able to protect them. The original concept for the book stems from Yvonne’s thoughts about the separated families trying to reconnect after the emancipation of slaves in America. She compared the situation of separated families under the current administration in America and the struggle to reunite children with their families with the technology and resources available in 2019, to that of 1864 where families torn apart by slavery tried to reconnect following emancipation without any of these things. Record keeping of individual’s whereabouts was minimal and often people’s names were changed by slave keepers which heightened the difficulty of finding your loved ones again. Coupled with the views of many who despite the emancipation, still held the same racist thoughts and made it extremely difficult for anyone to travel with the introduction of essential papers and refusal to let people go. Yvonne also reflects on the issues around reuniting emotionally. Families may have found each other again physically but the emotional scars of what they had endured must have made a significant impact on their ability to reconnect.
The books success has been a rapid one with Yvonne being long-listed for the Women’s prize for fiction shortly after its publication in February 2019. The short list will be released on 29 April with the winner declared on 5 June 2019.
Yvonne’s success in awards is not limited to her writing; whilst studying at Lancaster University for her PhD, she set up a triple award winning radio show on Bailrigg fm, the University’s in house radio station. Yvonne used the show, aptly named ‘The Writing Life’, to explore ways in which budding writers such as herself can make careers out of their work. This was done by interviewing publishers, agents, and other writers to have discussions about best practice. Yvonne would like to introduce something similar here at Sheffield Hallam where her students can share ideas and get discussions going about establishing a writing career.
Yvonne has not only demonstrated success in her personal achievements in writing, but also in the community projects she has introduced and been a part of, and she still has hopes for more! The aims for a monthly literary salon, a university publishing press, a radio show for her students, another novel, a game and an animated series for children featuring diverse characters are all on her ‘list of things to do’.
I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next!
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