Rosie Garland FRSL (born 1960) is a British novelist, poet and singer with post-punk band The March Violets.[1][2] In 2023, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.[3]

Rosie Garland
Garland reading her poetry at an online event in 2021
Born (1960-05-08) 8 May 1960 (age 64)
London, England
Other namesRosie Lugosi
Alma materUniversity of Leeds
Occupation(s)Novelist, poet, singer
Parent(s)William Garland (father) Mary Garland (née Metcalfe, mother)
Websitewww.rosiegarland.com

Life

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Born in London on 8 May 1960, she was adopted as a baby by her mother Mary Garland (née Metcalfe) and father William Garland, spending her childhood living in Hampshire, Somerset, Devon and Hertfordshire.[4] In 1978, aged 18, she moved to Yorkshire to study at the University of Leeds, graduating with a BA Hons in English Special Studies and an MA (with distinction) in Medieval English Studies.[5] In 1980 she joined The March Violets. During 1984–1986 she worked as an English Teacher in Sudan.[6] From 2001 she was the victim of a stalker, with the 2007 court case featured as a lead article in the Manchester Evening News.[7][8] In 2009 she was diagnosed with throat cancer and successfully treated at The Christie Hospital in Manchester.

Career

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She has published seven solo collections of poetry. As a performance poet, she has often given readings as her alter-ego Rosie Lugosi, Lesbian Vampire Queen and has performed on the cabaret circuit in British troupe Lesburlesque. In 2001 she won the Performance Artist category in the Sexual Freedom Awards.[9][10][11][12][13]

Her debut novel The Palace of Curiosities won the inaugural Mslexia Novel Competition in 2012 and was published by HarperCollins. This work is set in a Victorian freak show, where the central character Eve has hypertrichosis, a condition where the entire body is covered in hair.[14][15] This was followed by a second novel, Vixen and a third novel The Night Brother, which is set in her adopted city of Manchester.[16][17]

In 2018 she became inaugural Writer-in-Residence at The John Rylands Library, Manchester.[18] In 2019 she was selected by Val McDermid, who had been asked by the National Centre for Writing and the British Council to choose ten writers to showcase the quality and breadth of LGBTQI+ writers working in the UK.[19][20]

Awards

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  • 2012: Winner, Mslexia Novel Competition
  • 2013: Winner, Cooperative Bank "Loved By You" LGBT Book of the Year 2013

Works

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Poetry

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  • Hell and Eden (Dagger Press, 1997)
  • Creatures of the Night (purpleprosepress, 2003)
  • Coming Out at Night (purpleprosepress, 2005)
  • Things I Did While I Was Dead, 2010, ISBN 978-0955509254
  • Everything Must Go, 2012, ISBN 978-1907320224
  • As In Judy, 2016, ISBN 978-0995501201
  • What Girls Do In The Dark, 2020, ISBN 978-1-913437-05-3

Novels

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Reviews

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References

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  1. ^ Ripped, torn and cut : pop, politics and punk fanzines from 1976. Subcultures Network. Manchester. 2018. ISBN 978-1-5261-2060-1. OCLC 1047812068.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link)
  2. ^ "Putting Leeds's goth scene into perspective - Leeds Beckett University Blogs". www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk. Retrieved 30 November 2020.
  3. ^ Creamer, Ella (12 July 2023). "Royal Society of Literature aims to broaden representation as it announces 62 new fellows". The Guardian.
  4. ^ "Why I have never felt the need to find my birth mother". The Telegraph. 10 August 2014. Retrieved 2 December 2020.
  5. ^ "Telling the truth and telling it slant: writing Vixen". 6 June 2016. Retrieved 2 December 2020.
  6. ^ Pettersson, Lin (2016). ""Definitely an Author to Watch": Rosie Garland on the (Neo) Victorian Freak". Neo-Victorian Studies. 8 (2): 200–223.
  7. ^ Osuh, Chris (27 October 2005). "Lesbian stalker loses vampire love battle". Manchester Evening News. Retrieved 2 December 2020.
  8. ^ Manchester Evening News (15 February 2007). "Lesbian stalker and the vampire poet". Manchester Evening News. Retrieved 2 December 2020.
  9. ^ Rapi, Nina; Chowdhry, Maya (1998). Acts of passion : sexuality, gender, and performance. New York: Haworth Park Press. ISBN 0-7890-0370-8. OCLC 39108745.
  10. ^ Kronenberg, Frank; Pollard, Nick; Sakellariou, Dikaios (2011). Occupational therapies without borders : towards an ecology of occupation-based practices (1st ed.). Edinburgh: Churchill Livingston/Elsevier. ISBN 978-0-7020-3103-8. OCLC 624405642.
  11. ^ Garland, Rosie (2 July 1998). "Coming Out at Night—Performing as the Lesbian Vampire Rosie Lugosi". Journal of Lesbian Studies. 2 (2–3): 201–207. doi:10.1300/J155v02n02_15. ISSN 1089-4160. PMID 24785525.
  12. ^ "feral feminisms » "PERFORMING QUEER FEMININITY AND PERFORMING IT ALL WRONG:" THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PERFORMANCE PERSONA ROSIE LUGOSI THE VAMPIRE QUEEN". Retrieved 30 November 2020.
  13. ^ "Rosie Lugosi - Vampire Queen". Terrorizer. 18 July 2011. Retrieved 30 November 2020.
  14. ^ Neo-Victorian humour : comic subversions and unlaughter in contemporary historical re-visions. Kohlke, Marie-Luise., Gutleben, Christian. Leiden: Brill. 2017. ISBN 978-90-04-33661-2. OCLC 993642613.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  15. ^ Tomaiuolo, Saverio (2018), Tomaiuolo, Saverio (ed.), "Julia Pastrana's Traces, or the Afterlives of the Victorian Ape Woman", Deviance in Neo-Victorian Culture: Canon, Transgression, Innovation, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 65–103, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-96950-3_3, ISBN 978-3-319-96950-3, retrieved 30 November 2020
  16. ^ "Author, singer and vampire Rosie Garland talks to Northern Soul". Northern Soul. 13 March 2015. Retrieved 24 November 2020.
  17. ^ "Manchester Gothic Festival: Local authors discuss the Gothic as an identity". aAh! Magazine. 30 October 2019. Retrieved 30 November 2020.
  18. ^ "Rosie Garland is the new writer-in-residence at Manchester's John Rylands Library". Visit Manchester. Retrieved 22 November 2020.
  19. ^ McDermid, Val (10 August 2019). "The word is out: Val McDermid selects Britain's 10 most outstanding LGBTQ writers". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 November 2020.
  20. ^ "Val McDermid's ten exciting LGBTQI+ writers in the UK". National Centre for Writing. Retrieved 24 November 2020.
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