Amanda Garrie has a doctorate in creative writing from the University of Portsmouth where, until recently, she lectured on the Degree and MA programmes. She was awarded an Arts Council funded position as Poet in Residence for Portsmouth City Council’s Library and Archive Service (2019) and has had poetry accepted in a number of anthologies, in the UK and globally. Poetry is part of her activism. She is a founder and lead co-ordinator for T’Articulation, a fifty-strong troupe of spoken word artists from in and around Portsea Island and regularly appears on the city’s wider performance circuit. Her prose writing is mainly in the genre of magical realism, reflecting a childhood steeped in the folklore of the English countryside and her Romany heritage. Although technically retired, Amanda still delivers community-facing writing workshops for the library service and with the university. She also dabbles in art.