Marj

I’ve mentioned my friend Marj a few times in this journal but today marks her first appearance here in photographic form.

Marj is a gifted and dedicated writer, journalist and playwright (and a fellow photographer!) who works tirelessly at her craft, with a focus on cultural, social and political themes. Her work features regularly in such publications as gal-dem, Red Pepper and Cinema Femme; she was a Writer in Residence for last year’s Liverpool Independents Biennial Arts Festival and was shortlisted for the Kenneth Branagh Award for New Drama Writing. She’s also been central to Liverpool’s response to the Windrush scandal. And she teaches creative writing. In fact, she was the course leader for the TranScripts course for trans and non-binary writers that I was involved with this time last year in my previous job, and she was absolutely brilliant!

She’s constantly busy so I was grateful that she made the time to meet up to celebrate her birthday with some cake! In the ensuing sugar rush, she agreed to let me take her picture, and I agreed to let her give me a chess lesson. I suspect that I enjoyed the chess more than she enjoyed being photographed, but I think we were both happy with this picture in the end!

Happy Birthday, Marj! Here’s some Nina Simone which I know you like... https://youtube.com/watch?v=Qg6PSqSCsoI and some Rhiannon Giddens which I hope you’ll like... https://youtube.com/watch?v=a4Xlyi8Is98