A short personal essay about farewelling my mother, published in Short Reads in November 2025. https://www.short-reads.org/out-the-front-door/
Out the front door
Category: Essay
To the dance
This piece, published in Sad Girl Diaries recounts how it took me all afternoon to get ready for the fourth form social. You can read it at https://www.sadgirldiaries.com/post/to-the-dance-beverley-stevens
On the Same Wavelength
This essay about working for the BBC World Service in London in the unit that scheduled transmissions to exotic and contested places was published in the literary journal Dorothy Parker's Ashes. You can read it at https://www.dorothyparkersashes.com/work/on-the-same-wavelength
A River Runs Through My Memoir-In-Essays
This craft essay, published on the Brevity Blog, tracks some of my reading and learning about writing memoir and, in particular, references Dinty Moore's concept of the magnetic river that needs to run through a story. Read it at https://brevity.wordpress.com/2025/01/29/a-river-runs/
Not telling it all
In this article published on the Brevity Blog, I explore how much to reveal and publish about family dramas and difficult relationships in the memoir pieces and personal essays I write. Read it at https://brevity.wordpress.com/2024/03/08/not-telling-it-all/
A dreadful girl
"I didn’t like Katherine Mansfield; she was a dreadful girl", my grandmother told me. This essay, originally published in the Katherine Mansfield Society newsletter in August 2023, explores her attitude, and that of her family, to the woman who would become a highly acclaimed short story writer. Click on the photo to read it.
Been and gone
Published online in the literary journal Dorothy's Parker's Ashes, this piece was submitted in response to a call for submissions on the theme 'mother'. My mother is seated in the bottom row, first on the left. Read it at http://www.dorothyparkersashes.com/mother/gone
Not drowning but waving
A personal essay, first published by Headland in issue 16, November 2021 and included, with some changes, in a forthcoming anthology 'Loving Arrangements: Stories about Modern Living and Loving' to be published by Rutgers University Press in 2026. Click on the photo to read it.
Pretty pink things
Pink things are sneaking into my bathroom and stealing into my bedroom, insinuating themselves uninvited. In the bathroom, a pink toothbrush and soapdish, a pink pot plant container for the maidenhair fern and a pink spray bottle to keep it misted and moist. By day, I wear sober blues and sombre blacks. At night, I … Continue reading Pretty pink things
Days of uncertain sunshine
Photo by Florian Schmetz on Unsplash Beneath the self-congratulations and thankfulness that we can hug family and friends and relax these summer holidays without the worry of catching Covid, anxiety gently tumbles in my mind like the towels in my front-loading dryer. This is surely just a period of respite now that a more transmissible … Continue reading Days of uncertain sunshine
Fragments of an ordinary life 