I have two hometowns, and nobody will convince me otherwise:
a small village near Verona, Italy, where I was born in 1994, and the marble city of Carrara, in Tuscany, where I’ve spent most of my summers and lived for a few months.
Although my mum initially planned on calling me Selvaggia (‘wild’), my actual name means Jade in Italian.
I wrote my first poem and short story when I was around five years old. Pretty sure the former was about a goldfish flying away thanks to a red balloon and the latter about a cowardly seal. (Disclaimer: if you’re planning on buying my books, I promise I’ve improved a lot since then!)
I moved to England when I was nineteen, with an odd feeling often distracting me from my frenetic London life: that of having a purpose, something I was meant to be doing but I just couldn’t figure out. It wasn’t until I was forced to slow down by catching chickenpox that this longed-for epiphany presented itself to me.
WRITING. The answer was writing.
I followed an intensive creative writing course led by author Amy Prior through London’s City University and then went on to complete a BA (Hons.) Creative & Media Writing degree at the University of Portsmouth.
Whilst working in a hotel and then a café to support myself financially, I wrote articles for local websites and was chosen as one of the editors of the university paper, The Gallon.
I also won the WriteUp short story competition with A Button and Fifty-Four Cigars and achieved second place at the TongueFreed short story competition with my work in Spanish.
After graduating, I moved to the Roman city of Chester. Living in proximity to northern and Welsh natural landscapes has heavily influenced my writing, especially with so many folktales hovering around local forests and castles.
I now run my own copywriting business and write both fiction and poetry.
A condensed biography
FICTION: a quirky writer weaving magic into the ordinary (or vice versa)
In 2021, I published Set in Marble, a magical realism short story collection set in Carrara, my beloved marble town.
It’ll transport you to this peculiar Tuscan setting squashed between the mountain quarries and the Mediterranean Sea, populated by unforgettable characters who will stay with you long after you’ve turned the last pages.
One of my short stories has also been published in the February/March 2018 edition of The London Magazine.
Plus, I’ve recently completed my first novel (a fantasy story inspired by Faroese folklore), currently looking for a home.
POETRY: a UK poet using personal anecdotes and memorable imagery to portray universal feelings
In 2020, I published my debut poetry collection, Will-o’-the-Wisps. It contains over sixty poems across different forms, each of them complemented by a small illustration by yours truly.
In 2023, Querencia Press gave Ghost Hometowns… well, a home. My latest poetry pamphlet—full of nostalgia and memorable imagery—is a doomed quest for a home in one’s birth country, abroad, and even with family holding opposing views.
My poetry has also been published in The Pangolin Review, the summer 2021 issue of October Hill Magazine, Ink Sac by Cephalopress (Ragdoll and The Girl Who Used to Gaze at Battersea Power Station), the poetry anthology Depression is What Really Killed the Dinosaurs, and the other side of hope.
Follow my quirky writer life
I share both my writing and author journey on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and occasionally on TikTok.
What can you expect? Cute cafés, books that I just couldn’t put down, local scenery that looks like the setting of a fantasy story… and all the behind-the-scenes of the life of a quirky writer, of course.
