Thank you for joining me!
Hello there — I’m Abby, a writer and artist living in the U.K.
How The Light Gets In is my newsletter, sharing reflections on building a values based arts and writing practice centering truth, community, gentleness, sustainability, and public good.
If you’re interested in the creative process of a working novelist and art-making as socio-cultural activism you’re in the right spot.
My novels Flick, Golden Boy, and Dead Girls, are published in eight languages; in the UK by Orion & Picador, and in the USA by Simon & Schuster. I’m a recipient of awards and grants from Arts Council England & the National Lottery, American Library Association (Alex award), Society of Authors, Authors’ Foundation & K. Blundell Trust. Read more about my novels here.
I’m also a development editor and mentor. If you’re interested in this side of my work, learn more here.
I have two new sections for 2025, one on my Journal Art, and another on being a loss mum—you have to sign up for these separately from the main newsletter (you can also set it up so you get the posts but they appear only in the app). This is so as not to inadvertently trigger difficult emotions for loss parent readers.
I hope to share inspiring, affecting, thought-provoking essays, from a writer and artist who still believes in her heart that art and literature can change the world. Don't give up hope. Subscribe. Make art. Believe in the power of us. Join me to find the cracks, where the light gets in.
You can support my work in several ways
purchase a novel for yourself or a friend (this is a bookshop.org page so we can all support independent sellers!)
buy an ebook, epamphlet, zine or chapbook on Etsy (shop updates soon)
subscribe to this newsletter with the button below (free)
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I’m also on Instagram if you want to follow me on there.
Thank you for being part of the adventure!
Press Bio
Abby is a queer Br-Irish Grimsbearian loss mum, award-winning author, and community arts practitioner, best known for Golden Boy - "a grippingly innovative" coming-of-age novel with a "radical non-binary, pro-intersex message" (Hida Viloria, Autostraddle).
Golden Boy is published in 9 languages, and recipient of accolades including the American Library Association Alex Award, Best LGBT Debut LAMBDA Finalist, Booklist Top 10 First Novel, and School Library Journal Best Book. Rights were sold to Duck Soup/BBC Films in 2017, and a feature adaptation was in development for 7 years with Abby attached as co-screenwriter; a project which has since… sadly bit the dust. Of Abby’s other novels, Foreword Reviews gave follow-up Dead Girls 5 stars, calling it "a heart stopping horror novel and a frightening coming-of-age story". GQ dubbed debut novel Flick a "cult classic".
Abby’s past work as a scriptwriter, presenter, journalist, and musician, includes scripts for BBC Films, ACE-funded podcast Writing Coercive Control, section editorship at Phoenix magazine, editorship of I Hope You Like Feminist Rants zine, journalism for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Independent, Glamour, Oh Comely, and The Huffington Post, and lead singer/lyricist of the band Girlboy. She is a Moviescope One to Watch actress, a past juror for the British Independent Film Awards and Nibfest Write-a-thon, a recipient of awards from The Authors Foundation and K Blundell Trust, and a member of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain.
Abby’s creative health community arts practice, IRL Creative Health, launched in June 2025 with an 8-part workshop series on journaling for fiction and non-fiction at Arts Council National Portfolio Organisation St Margaret’s House in Bethnal Green.
Abby was awarded 2024 Arts Council England x British National Lottery funding for a forthcoming fiction trilogy, and is working on a baby loss memoir and developing Dead Girls for TV. She currently presents and writes for the political podcast, From Below The Balcony. Her writing will appear in a forthcoming (Autumn 2025) issue of Ache magazine. Find her on Substack at www.abigailtarttelin.com
