Fans pick 100 books like Penguin's Poems for Life

I spent years trapped inside a devastating lack of self-esteem. To face my demons, and find the freedom and confidence to give expression to the creative soul buried within, I had to dive deep beneath life’s surface. After a life-changing injury, I began anew at age forty, and the writer and poet version of me was born. If I’ve learnt one thing, it’s that it’s never too late to be who you were meant to be. For me, poetry needs to inspire, make me think, and move me. I love to write poems that surprise, startle, reach the soul, and are layered with life, love, and meaning. 

I spent years trapped inside a devastating lack of self-esteem. To face my demons, and find the freedom and confidence to give expression to the creative soul buried within, I had to dive deep beneath life’s surface. After a life-changing injury, I began anew at age forty, and the writer and poet version of me was born. If I’ve learnt one thing, it’s that it’s never too late to be who you were meant to be. For me, poetry needs to inspire, make me think, and move me. I love to write poems that surprise, startle, reach the soul, and are layered with life, love, and meaning. 

I spent years trapped inside a devastating lack of self-esteem. To face my demons, and find the freedom and confidence to give expression to the creative soul buried within, I had to dive deep beneath life’s surface. After a life-changing injury, I began anew at age forty, and the writer and poet version of me was born. If I’ve learnt one thing, it’s that it’s never too late to be who you were meant to be. For me, poetry needs to inspire, make me think, and move me. I love to write poems that surprise, startle, reach the soul, and are layered with life, love, and meaning. 

I spent years trapped inside a devastating lack of self-esteem. To face my demons, and find the freedom and confidence to give expression to the creative soul buried within, I had to dive deep beneath life’s surface. After a life-changing injury, I began anew at age forty, and the writer and poet version of me was born. If I’ve learnt one thing, it’s that it’s never too late to be who you were meant to be. For me, poetry needs to inspire, make me think, and move me. I love to write poems that surprise, startle, reach the soul, and are layered with life, love, and meaning. 

From when I first learned to read, books opened a whole new world, which has given me vast pleasure ever since. I think it’s made me wiser, too. But it wasn’t until the sudden death of my younger son in 2020 that I began to read about the edges of the known world, and to discover that by opening my mind I could re-learn what I instinctively knew as a young child: that we come from somewhere else. Even before encountering tragedy, I’d been fascinated by the dividing line between what science can prove, and what still remains conjecture: it’s a theme I have returned to again and again in my fiction. 

I’ve always been in love with the idea of love. I didn’t know what that feeling was like for a long time–not being in love myself–so I grew attached to fictionalised worlds that brought those ideas to life. I’ve always been the person who smiles at a meet-cute or feels that warm, fuzzy feeling inside when the couple you’ve been rooting for the last two hundred pages finally kisses. I want them to know how exciting it can be to feel loved and experience that through the creation of stories. This is why romance is, and likely always will be, a huge thematic influence on all forms of my work. 

Since 2012, when I was fortunate to be a companion to my dying father, I have gained a deep appreciation for the topics of death, dying, grief and bereavement. Being with him during his final moments was a vitally transformative event in my life, and subsequent developments led me to become a writer and curator of content in this field. I am now an end-of-life educator and preparedness facilitator, whose role it is to assist others to prepare for their inevitable, eventual death. Being prepared, by making informed choices and documenting them, can be one of the greatest gifts we give to our loved ones. I coach my End-of-Life Matters clients to do just that.

I’ve been a student of story structure for decades. As a novelist, this initially started as a means to learn as much as I could from those with more experience than myself, but quickly grew into a passion. I read everything on the subject I could get my hands on and eventually began analyzing the plots of novels and movies for myself, amalgamating what I had learned with my own theories and insights which coalesced into a wholly new structural paradigm. Since then, I’ve had the privilege of working with many talented screenwriters and novelists to help them shape their stories using Six Act Structure. 

I am a Scottish writer who enjoys travelling and meeting people of different cultures and beliefs. I have always been a fan of adventure stories, particularly those with a strange or supernatural bent. My travels to The Ivory Coast and North Africa, hearing accounts of various witch stories, and encountering strange events and practices firsthand inspired me to write The Witch’s List Trilogy: the first two books published and the third in progress. 

I’m a YA contemporary author that enjoys falling back into the realm of the teenager with all its newness, awkwardness, and angst. I grew up with the Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles, the genre that encapsulated and empowered the young adult voice. The coming-of-age story is so important because it molds the future of that character which in turn can mold the reader as well. What happens to a young person in their developing years will set the tone for their entire life. As a writer and a mother, I want to share stories that not only entertain but help young adults navigate difficult situations.