biogs

I see so many out-of-date biogs about me all over the place, here’s two I know are up to date.

a writing biog :
Stella Duffy has written seventeen novels. Her latest Lullaby Beach was published by Virago in February 2021. Money in the Morgue was published by HarperCollins in 2018, a novel started and abandoned by Dame Ngaio Marsh in the 1940s; Stella completed the book based on several (incomplete) early chapters and the few notes left by Marsh.
She has also written and devised fourteen plays and written over seventy short stories, including several for BBC Radio 4. Her collected stories are published by Salt in Everything is Moving, Everything is Joined. She won the CWA Short Story Dagger in 2002 (Martha Grace) and 2013 (Come Away With Me), Stonewall Writer of the Year in 2008 (The Room of Lost Things) and 2010 (Theodora), and the Diva Literary prize for Fiction in 2017 (London Lies Beneath). Her novels The Room of Lost Things and State of Happiness were long-listed for the Orange Prize. She wrote and presented the BBC4 documentary How to Write a Mills and Boon and has reviewed for The Review Show (BBC2), Front Row and Saturday Review (BBCRadio4) and written articles for most major newspapers in the UK.
In addition to her writing work she worked in theatre for over thirty five years. She was the co-founder of the Fun Palaces Campaign for community-led culture and co-director from 2013 to 2021. Stella is a regular speaker and campaigner around LGBTQ+, women’s and arts equality and inclusion issues. She was awarded the OBE for Services to the Arts in 2016. She is a qualified yoga teacher, running workshops in yoga for writing, and has a doctorate in existential psychotherapy. Her research was in the embodied experience of postmenopause.

a theatre/performance biog :
Stella Duffy directed Murder, Marple and Me (Gilded Balloon, UK tour, Ambassadors, NYC Fringe), M.A.I.R.O.U.L.A (The Storey, Lancaster), Live – Celebration (Live Theatre, Newcastle). For Shaky Isles she has directed Expectations (Pleasance Islington), Ordinary Darkness (Hen and Chickens, London), TaniwhaThames (OvalHouse, London), My Inner Orc (Pleasance Islington), Skin Tight (Pleasance Islington & Riverside, London), Kikia to Poa (Pacific Playhouse, London), Precious Things (Pacific Playhouse, London). She also directed Cell Sell at the Soho Theatre for the NYT and The Seduction of Ms Sarah Hart at OvalHouse for Kindred Spirits. She is an Associate Artist with Improbable and a member of Improbable’s Lifegame company. She has been a core member of impro comedy company Spontaneous Combustion since 1988. Her solo show Breaststrokes was Time Out and Guardian Critic’s Choice. She was the founder and convenor of The Chaosbaby Project a large-scale multi-disciplinary Open Space theatre work, created in Open Space by 60 theatremakers ranging in ages from 17 to 70.
She is also a novelist and playwright, and the co-founder of the Fun Palaces Campaign for community-led culture, co-directing Fun Palaces from 2013 to 2021. Stella is a regular speaker and campaigner around LGBTQ, women’s and arts equality and inclusion issues. She was awarded the OBE for Services to the Arts in 2016. She is a qualified yoga teacher, running workshops in yoga for writing, and has a doctorate in existential psychotherapy. Her research was in the embodied experience of postmenopause.