I am a nuclear chemist specialising in the management of the back-end of the fuel cycle, working at a national laboratory near the English Lake District.
Until recently I was a planetary geochemist at the University of Oxford, where I researched how ancient Martian lakes once affected the planet's climate—and were themselves in turn affected. I documented my journey across 75 videos on my YouTube channel, The PhDiaries.
Originally from the Victorian seaside town of Southport, I am a fourth-generation gardener’s daughter who grew up in a geographer's paradise of sand dunes and pine forests. Outside of research I fell-run, wild-swim, make art out of sea shore finds, and write fiction.
I am represented by Julie Crisp at the Julie Crisp Literary Agency for my science fiction novel Plutoshine, which won the inaugural Bloomsbury Writers & Artists’ Working Class Writers’ Prize and was shortlisted for the 2023 Arthur C. Clarke Award for best science fiction book of the year.
Plutoshine is published by Gollancz (Orion) and is available from all major bookstores, and was described by Alastair Reynolds as a ‘glorious sunburst of imagination’.