Anni Swinburn
Writer
Anni Swinburn grew up in Sheffield on the Gleadless Valley council estate. She left school at fifteen with no qualifications and worked as a telephonist for the general Post office, as an assistant with the YHA and then trained as nursery nurse.
After working as a nanny in Rome for a year, she returned to work with the small Sheffield-based charity Halfway Home which supported young people recently discharged from psychiatric hospital.
After which she travelled overland to Asia during which time she volunteered for six months with the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta.
After travelling on to Nepal, Burma and Thailand she returned to Sheffield and married then had three daughters in three years, and after taking GCSEs at her local adult education centre she applied to Sheffield Hallam University, was accepted and subsequently completed a BA in Applied Social Studies and diploma in Social Work. After that, she worked in South Yorkshire as a family social worker in child protection, fostering and adoption.
Throughout all this time, she was writing and completed the part-time MA in Creative Writing at SHU in early 2000. She retired from social work in 2013.
Mother House Novel
My debut novel MOTHER HOUSE is out now. It is a hybrid; a travelogue memoir with an exciting novel weaving throughout. A story of adventure, obsession, mental illness, trauma and recovery but above all it is about love in its many forms. It should appeal to readers who like fiction set in foreign lands from a feminist perspective touching on political, religious and family dynamics.
In 1978, Marianne should be preparing for her wedding but instead she flees her home city of Sheffield, buys a one-way ticket on a budget bus to India and sets off on the hippy trail. On a beach in Kerala, she witnesses a tragedy and forms a bond with a charismatic fellow traveller. They meet up later in Sri Lanka where she becomes captivated by him and begins to find the emotional and sexual connection she has been looking for. Will this relationship survive?
In 1997, Sister Marie-Agnes prepares to leave the convent where she has lived for almost two decades. She arrived there with a locked truck and no memory of her past. As she delves into the trunk can she come to terms with what she finds?I have compiled a Spotify music playlist for readers which I hope will evoke Marianne's emotional journey and bring it to life.
Past Work
MOTHER HOUSE began as a series of travel tales when on the MA in Creative writing and was put to one side whilst working on a piece for theatre.
LOST CRYSTALS a series of inter-connecting monologues stimulated by my experiences as a social worker concerned the whereabouts of a missing girl groomed by local men. The monologues were also stand-alone pieces and some were short listed for the Heretic Voices Monologue competition in 2017, another selected for the Undisclosed Festival and performed at the Old Red Lion Theatre Pub in Islington and later at Southwark Playhouse directed by Gary Beadle. The full script of Lost Crystals was chosen to be part of the John Thaw Initiative in 2019 and performed as a rehearsed reading, directed and produced by myself, at the Tristan Bates studio theatre in Covent Garden. Several of the individual monologues have been broadcast on BBC Radio Sheffield.
MR WONG’S LULLABY is a short screenplay about a busy social worker who is also a carer for her father who has dementia. It was co-written by myself and Clare Langford, a London based Irish born actor, writer, director. We formed Rookie Films Ltd and managed, unbelievably, to shoot the film over three days during covid April 2021, in the house and gardens of my friends in Sheffield. The film premiered at Abbeydale Picture House in October 2021 and then went on to be selected for over 30 festivals on the international short film Circuit and win several awards.
Contact
If you enjoy my work, please drop me a line!
Thank you
Thanks for your interest in my work.