Rhiannon lucsy cosslett biography of michael
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She was born in Islington, grew up in Wales, spent time living in France and Italy, and has now returned to her birthplace.Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a columnist, feature writer and editor for The Guardian newspaper. I wondered if it might be terrible but actually, flicking through it, I was pleasantly surprised. I think I captured the hallucinatory, almost feral feel of the city in a heatwave rather well.
Which piece of published writing are you most proud of?
I think projects are like children: you love them all for and not despite their different qualities.
I’m a speed reader so this is extremely slow for me. I had a very clear vision for the book from the start. I don’t know why Italy is drawing me so powerfully at the moment but it is. I would sit there typing away with my feet warming on the tiled floor. I couldn’t write this book without having lived through matrescence,’ it was too fundamental to the core of the story.
How did your newest book, The Republic of Parenthood, come about?
Like probably all freelance writers who find out they are pregnant, I had a horror of becoming forgotten and obsolete, so working on the basis of ‘everything is copy,’ I pitched a column about it to my editors at The Guardian.
It’s wonderful; I always enjoy autobiographical writing that takes a creative approach, and this is both funny, moving, and eccentric in the best way. It’s nothing to do with the content of the book – he’s a phenomenal writer and this latest novel is one of his best – and more its materiality.
This book is a collection of those essays alongside new material and beautiful illustrations by the artist Pia Bramley, whose work really captures that feeling in early parenthood where you are having the best and also the worst time of your life sometimes in the space of five minutes, and that wild mix of hope, love and fear.
This gives me hope for women and for feminism and for funJeanette Winterson, Guardian
Essential reading for every woman, young and grown-up – a guidebook for reading between the lines…A real romp!
Jo Brand
This is great: warm, witty and wise – an antidote to all of the usual nonsense
Jenny Eclair
A brilliant expose of women's mags and marketing – laugh-out-loud and painfully funny.
I wanted to write through those wild weeks, and had already signed up to do so before he arrived, but the cosmic, brutal reality of living in a maternal body doesn’t hit you until you’ve given birth.”
Tell us about a book that has changed the course of your writing life
The Baby on the Fire Escape by Julie Phillips is a must read for any woman who fears the impact of the ‘pram in the hall’, a bullshit, sexist phantom created by men.
Each morning I would swim in it before breakfast, then would go up to my room to write to the sound of the crickets and the wood pigeons.
This Writing Life: Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett
Journalist and writer Rhiannon LucyCosslett tells us about how motherhood has – and hasn’t – changed her writing life.
What was the first thing you did this morning?
I went through to see my 3-year-old son for cuddles.
This book showed me how so many women artists and writers have integrated their practice into their domestic lives however they were able, and produced astonishing work as a result. It was a moment of going: ‘oh, this is why I stopped writing here. It’s a good thing that I was never much of a morning writer, because having a small child would undoubtedly scupper that sort of routine.
I didn’t want it to be another collection of columns with the writer making a quizzical expression on the cover; I wanted it to be a beautiful object, something that can be given as a gift to new parents embarking on that journey, which will hopefully make them feel validated and less alone.
What did you learn from the making of this book, and how did it differ from previous projects?
I learned the validity and importance of writing certain experiences in real time.
Loving him has defined my life in so many ways, not least in the importance of laughter through tears, but perhaps most fundamentally in my belief that art is what saves us.
The Republic of Parenthood by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett (September Publishing) is out today, 7th August, and you can buy a copy here.
Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett
Praise for The Vagenda
A brilliant expose of women's mags and marketing – laugh-out-loud and painfully funny.
That feeling – of awe mixed with terror – I wanted to bottle that in print for everyone who has ever felt it. Along with The Laugh of the Medusa, Hélène Cixous’ 1975 essay about ‘écriture féminine’, it has been fundamental to my writing practice.
Tell us about a moment that has changed the course of your writing life
The birth of my son and the weeks following.
I have extensive radio experience, having appeared on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour and the Today programme, amongst many others.