Jade Mitchell is a writer and poet based in Glasgow. She recently graduated with an MLitt in Creative Writing from the University of Strathclyde, where she was awarded the Brian Hamill Common Breath prize for her writing. Her poetry can be found in online publications such as Moist Poetry Journal and Untitled Writing. She has performed at literary nights and festivals around the UK, including Loud Poets and UniSlam.

In 2022, she collaborated with queer theatre company Moot Point Collective to write her first poetry film, ‘The Door’. As an emerging fiction writer, Jade is interested in playing with liminality, the intersections of desire and sexuality, and surreality and strangeness. She is currently working on her first short story collection.

Writing sample

Six months have passed, and Jessica has learned to ignore the growing stares and lingering looks as she walks with her lover in hand. When she’s not working at the kitchen table, she takes Bethany out to the park, the museum, the cinema, or down to the local pub. Jessica, with a pint and chips. Bethany, with food waste scraped from the kitchen bins. At the end of the night, Jessica curls an arm around her wife like she used to do, when they walked home together in a failing attempt to sober up. She is trying to concentrate on the experience she is having with the woman she still loves. She doesn’t want her to miss out on the world just because she looks a little different. She keeps the conversation going, one-sided. A parent trying to coddle a toddler into language. Bethany crawls and slithers in her sand and Jessica laughs, imagining a response to play off of.

Friends who knew them both say hi a little too enthusiastically. They look into Bethany’s terrarium with a forced beam of a smile, wrinkle their noses at the souring smell of her. They ask Jessica how life is going. She smiles and plays along and pretends she doesn’t notice.

Deep down, she knows that they, and the wider general public, have stopped caring, have grown desensitised to the worm. The number of transformations, once in hundreds, now dwindle to occasional single digits. Public appeals for sympathy are met with jokes, harassment, or caricatured on the internet. The scientific community has switched from tail-testing to poking at human diets, wondering if the transformation was triggered by a meat protein of the poisonous variety. But no answers have revealed themselves. The world has moved on. The worms remain.

Jade says:

'I am incredibly thrilled and honoured to receive this New Writer Award from Scottish Book Trust. It feels surreal to have my writing recognised in this way at such an early stage in my career. I cannot wait to meet the team, my fellow awardees, and to make the most of this valuable period of development.'

Photo credit: ©JohnNeed.co.uk(this link will open in a new window)