Lucy May.

Hello! I’m Lucy, a 22-year-old prose writer and occasional poet based in Sheffield. I studied creative writing at UEA from 2016-19, which was wonderful - I loved writing, performing and creative opportunities, and was lucky enough to run the Creative Writing Society. I hope to return to Norwich asap, but for the time being I’m up North, where I’ve been a Waterstones bookseller, short-story fanatic and a performer with the Dead Women Poets Society. I currently work part-time in a primary school, and as an editor with the Society of Young Publishers.

Ultimate Desert Island Disc:

'Short Movie' by Laura Marling.

If you could have written one novel,what would it be and why?

The Secret History by Donna Tartt. The feelings, the crimes, the characters, - everything in that book is so well-balanced and gripping. If I’d written that novel I would simply ascend to a celestial plane.

If you had to be locked inside one gallery overnight, which would it be and why?

The Artemesia Exhibition at the National Gallery in London. I was absolutely dying to see it, but London tier-4ed and ruined all my plans. She was a 17th Century Italian painter, like Michaelangelo and DaVinci, who portrayed canonical women in ways that had simply never been done before: Samson’s Delila, the rape of Lucretia, Judith beheading Holofernes. Radical renaissance? Yes please.

Have you ever heard a song that feels like it HAD to be written about you? What was it and why?

'You Don’t Want Me' by Margaret Glaspy. I came across the album after a fairly horrific breakup and listening to that song especially felt like having a little friend on my shoulder saying, ‘you are MIGHTY.’ It was magical.

What’s a poem you can recite on demand?

'The Night is Darkening ‘Round Me' by Emily Bronte. I used to read it over and over because I was so interested in the fact it was unfinished. Or 'Phainetai Moi/Fragment 31' by Sappho, for very similar reasons.