“After spending a lot of time, doing lots of things, I’m finally where I’m supposed to be, doing what I’m supposed to do.”
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Désirée Reynolds, (she/her) a South Londoner up North, was brought up in Clapham, London to Jamaican parents and now living in Sheffield. She told her Mum, at about 8 years old, that she was going to write a book and has been writing ever since. She started her writing career as a freelance journalist for the Jamaica Gleaner and the Village Voice. She has gone on to write film scripts, poetry, flash fiction and short stories. Her first novel, Seduce, was published in 2013 to much acclaim by Peepal Tree Press. Her fiction is concerned with working class Black women, internal landscapes and a continuous struggle against the white, male gaze, notions of beauty, race and being. Committed to anti racism and intersectionality, she draws on her experiences of these to make her creative work. Her short stories have been widely published in various publications and online.
Inc: A Generation Defining Itself, Hair: A Journey into the Afro and Asian Experience, Moss Side Stories, The Suitcase Book of Love Poems, Tangled Roots and Closure: Contemporary Black British Stories published by Peepal Tree Press She edited the anthology ‘Writing As Resistance’ published by the University Of Sheffield. She has a short story in The Book Of Sheffield, Born On Sunday Silent, Comma Press, inspired by the true story of a Black child buried in Sheffield General Cemetery 1902 and with Dead Ink and Bloomsbury Test Signal, Dead Ink Books.
She has been on numerous panels, radio and given talks about literature, film, race and gender and continues to work as a writer, editor, journalist, broadcaster and creative writing facilitator. BBC Short Story Prize Longlist, 2021
She is the writer in residence at Sheffield Archive
Her latest short story “Runway Flower” can be found in ‘Where We Find Ourselves Poems and Stories of Maps and Mapping from UK Writers of the Global Majority’ https://arachnepress.com/shop/Where-We-Find-Ourselves-p393994838 Oct 21