Rosie Garland


Rosie Garland FRSL is a British novelist, poet and singer with post-punk band The March Violets. In 2023, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Life

Born in London on 8 May 1960, she was adopted as a baby by her mother Mary Garland and father William Garland, spending her childhood living in Hampshire, Somerset, Devon and Hertfordshire. 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 in Medieval English Studies. In 1981 she joined The March Violets. During 1984 to 1986 she worked as an English teacher in Sudan. From 2001 she was the victim of a stalker, with the 2007 court case featured as a lead article in the Manchester Evening News. In 2009 she was diagnosed with throat cancer and successfully treated at The Christie Hospital in Manchester.

Career

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.
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. This was followed by a second novel, Vixen and a third novel The Night Brother, which is set in her adopted city of Manchester.
In 2018 she became inaugural Writer-in-Residence at The John Rylands Library, Manchester. 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.

Awards

Works

Poetry

Hell and Eden Creatures of the Night Coming Out at Night Things I Did While I Was Dead, 2010, Everything Must Go, 2012, As In Judy, 2016, What Girls Do In The Dark, 2020,
  • ''This Is How I Fight''

Novels

The Palace of Curiosities, 2013, Vixen, 2015, The Night Brother, 2017, The Fates, 2024,

Reviews

  • Judith Flanders. . The Guardian.
  • Claire Booker. . Write Out Loud.
  • Dr Claire Nally. . The Blogging Goth.
  • Juliano Zaffino. . Lunate Fiction.