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Mills & Boon presentation wins 3MT

I was delighted to win the Vitae Three Minute Thesis® (3MT) award at the University of Reading’s Doctoral Conference 2025 which took place on the 18th June.

The 3MT award challenges doctoral candidates to present a compelling spoken presentation on their research topic and its significance in just three minutes.

Entering under the School of Humanities, my talk was titled: ‘Sorry not sorry: The invisible women behind Mills & Boon’. My aim: to debunk the disparaging reputation surrounding the books and highlight the forgotten female authors who built a brand that became a household name.  

Competing against eight finalists, I was thrilled to be announced as the Judges’ choice on the day, and receive a certificate from Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Professor Parveen Yaqoob OBE.

Here’s to many more opportunities to discuss the women authors behind Mills & Boon – I’d like to express my gratitude to the lovely judges who allowed me to shine a light on their forgotten stories.

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Together we can

Life’s full of coincidences, and sometimes there’s beauty in that – the opportunity to observe connections which provide a mini-epiphany as we trundle through our everyday lives herding cats, dropping balls etc. (or maybe that’s just me…)

Today, I’ve crammed my heart in my mouth as the wonderful Charlotte Gann (editor of Nell Nelson’s Sphinx reviews and founder of The Understory Conversation) has published a lovely conversation between us. It truly bares my soul, and the article acts as an afterword to my journey back into poetry.

It’s timely then that myself and my Poets’ Café co-host Zannah Kearns will be speaking at ‘Together We Can’ at Reading University on International Women’s Day tomorrow. We’ll be talking about poetry as creative expression, the importance of having a voice and the revitalising experience of being part of a supportive community of writers. We’ll be reading a few of our poems, and the work of others who have inspired us.

I should probably have nerves jangling, but no, I’m looking forward to the opportunity to celebrate, to reflect, and to say a prayer for those most in need of resilience and humanity in today’s uncertain world.

For tickets to tomorrow’s symposium, please click here.