Rosie Garland
Rosie Garland has a passion for language nurtured by public libraries. She writes poetry, long and short fiction and sings with post-punk band The March Violets..
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Rosie is the author of The Palace of Curiosities (which won the Mslexia Novel Competition and was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize), Vixen and The Night Brother, which was described by The Times as “a delight…with shades of Angela Carter.” Her new novel, The Fates (Quercus) is a retelling of the Greek myth of the Fates (Moirai), personifications of destiny.
Her latest poetry collection, What Girls do in the Dark (Nine Arches Press), was shortlisted for the 2021 Polari Prize. Val McDermid has named her one of the most compelling LGBT+ writers in the UK today. In 2018-2019 she was inaugural Writer-in-Residence at The John Rylands Library, Manchester, and in 2023 was made a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature.
Out of the margins and reclaiming centre stage: the power of historical fiction & the rewriting of myth to give voice to the voiceless
They say ‘history is written by the winners’. I prefer to tell the truth, and tell it slant. My new novel, ‘The Fates’ (Quercus Books) is a re-imagining and retelling of the Greek myth of the Fates – the three sisters Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, who spin, measure and sever the thread of human destiny.
I’m excited by the power and potential of retellings to reclaim and re-occupy standard texts to create an enthralling narrative where previously overlooked and marginalised characters go from silence to speaking out.
As the Fates themselves say, ‘For the first time, we shall speak in our own voices, and tell the plain truth.”