Other Writing
Aside from my novels, I also enjoy writing essays, articles, short fiction, screenplays, and stage plays. A former travel guide writer, I later worked in feature film development, helping screenwriters with their scripts. For nearly three decades, I’ve also written articles for a variety of newspapers: starting as a teenager with The Record (New Jersey, USA), and then for The Harvard Gazette, The Huffington Post, and finally to outlets like The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Mail on Sunday, LitHub and many others.
Articles
I enjoy writing about storytelling in general, in literature and popular culture, particularly in relation to gender, race, class, and geography. Film, travel and nature writing are keen interests of mine. But I am perhaps best known for writing about sexual violence — societal attitudes toward the crime; representations in film and the media; and its impact on individuals. While this was sparked by my own experience as a rape victim, it has led to both my creative and academic interests in trauma, activism, recovery, and the media.
Some of my articles and blog posts are available online. Here’s a selection:
Essay for The Belfast Telegraph: On moving on from trauma and exploring new terrain – August 2025
Essay for Walk (The Ramblers) Magazine: Reclaiming the joys and freedoms of solo walking – June 2024
Essay for LitHub: On Finding That Elusive Thing: A Perfect Writing Space – June 2023
Essay for CrimeReads: Choosing our MeToo Heroes: Journalists or Survivors? – Dec 2022
Essay for heard: The Emotional Labour of Dealing with the Media – Aug 2022
(This essay won a Write to End Violence Against Women Award 2022 in journalism)
Essay for Bustle: Why We Still Need to Hold the Film Industry to Account – July 2022
Essay for Grazia ‘I Googled my rapist & was horrified by what I found’ – June 2022
Opinion piece for iPaper on sexual assault, workplaces & compassionate leave – June 2022
Essay for besea.n on race, complicity & working in the film industry – June 2022
Review of Cuties for Sight & Sound – Sept 2020
Feature on I May Destroy You for Sight & Sound – Aug 2020
A Pocket Guide to Writing Through Trauma – June 2020
Essay for The Belfast Telegraph on motherhood after rape – Jan 2020
Essay for Wasafiri for their ‘Writing Britain Now’ issue – Oct 2019
Essay for Electric Lit on being an Asian-American author published internationally – May 2019
Opinion piece for The Stylist on traveling alone and violence against women – Dec 2018
Opinion piece for The Guardian on the Nobel Peace Prize & #MeToo one year on – Oct 2018
Essay for The Dark Mountain Project on ‘Rewilding the Novel‘ – July 2018
Article for The Belfast Telegraph on the anniversary of my rape – April 2018
Article for LSE Review of Books on influential books about sexual violence – Feb 2018
Article for Journal.ie on #MeToo & social media – 16 November 2017
Opinion piece for The Guardian on #MeToo & the film industry- 6 November 2017
Article for LitHub on fiction writing & cinema – 18 September 2017
Article for The Times on writing Dark Chapter – 29 June 2017
Article on my experience of rape and the journey towards writing Dark Chapter for YOU Magazine (Mail on Sunday) – 14 May 2017
Article on ‘Hollywood’s Awards Season Fascination with Rape and Sexual Abuse’
Article for The Conversation on the Stanford sexual assault (republished by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, The Independent, TIME, Raw Story, Scroll, et al, with more than 93,000 people around the world reading it) – 9 June 2016
Semi-regular articles for The Huffington Post (US and UK site) – from April 2014 to present
Article in The Belfast Telegraph (published anonymously) – 10 September 2009