Hi, Annie! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?

I’m from Otley which is a small town on the outskirts of Leeds, a city in the north of England. Northerners have a stereotype for being friendlier and more fun than southerners and that’s definitely scientifically true. I have a huge imagination. At school teachers used to say I drift off into Annie Land and even now if I’m bored I’ll just disassociate and make up a scenario in my head, sometimes I don’t want to go to sleep because the plotline in my head is just too good. I think way too much about what people think about me. I think way too much about men. I lose and break everything — I just accidentally washed my passport along with two soy sauce sachets and my house keys. I think everything is still functional. I love cups of tea, the film Troy, vintage shopping, the smell of honeysuckle flowers, old women wearing too much floral perfume and the waft of it as they walk by. I love Friday nights in when you’re going out on the saturday, when people hold my feet, not massage them, just hold them, I love the sound of women’s heels click clacking on the pavement and long nails on a phone screen, I love my friends, I love lie ins but always feel guilty about them. I never feel like I’m living enough and I think that’s probably the main thing that stops me enjoying my life more. I love clothes and even since I was little my mum said I’d refuse to let her dress me. Once she tried to get me to wear this nice outfit my granny had bought me and I didn’t want to wear it so I peed in it. I journal every morning and at the end I write down everything I’m grateful for and most of the time the answer is just a mug of tea and the book I’m reading. 

When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?

When I was heading off to university I remember everyone telling me that to make the most of my time there I have to join loads of societies. They were mostly really crap gimmicky stuff like cocktail making society or the Friends watching society but then there was the university paper which sounded important and professional which mattered a lot to me as an eighteen year old who desperately wanted to be taken seriously. I sent in some writing and they gave me a column in it on sex and relationships. I was really embarrassed and didn’t tell anyone for a while and was mortified when my friends found it because I felt ashamed about trying that hard, a sort of who do I think I am? feeling. Anyway, I was studying Philosophy and we had this lecturer called Lars Iyer who was teaching us a module on existentialism. He is one of those teachers who completely changes how you view the world, would make me feel so passionate and angry about the state of the world, about capitalism and how dumb we’re all getting. One day before a lecture he passed me in the corridor and said, ‘I read your column, it was very funny’ and it was quite literally the best feeling in the world, and it still is, when someone says that to you, it means so much, that I can do this thing, all on my own, it comes out of my head and people enjoy it, it’s literally a super power.

Quick lightning round! Tell us:

• The first book you ever remember reading: The Tiger Who Came to Tea. 
• The one that made you want to become an author: I can’t think of a specific example but as mean-spirited as this is, badly written books make me want to write because you think, I can do this! When you read something amazing you just think — what’s the point, you’re so good, what am I going to add to the world? Those are the books that are good to read though because that’s where you actually learn stuff. 
•  The one that you can’t stop thinking about: I remember when I read Nausea by Sartre finding it really boring but then after the way the world appeared to me changed and I felt really odd. I would look at a cup and be like, should I pick it up? Or should I not pick it up? 

Your debut novel, The Project, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?

I really struggled with this! I just kept saying really generic stuff like ‘Sexy, funny, real…’ can I do five objects instead? Say, luke warm can of Red Stripe, a little hoop earring, well thumbed bell hooks book, wet knickers, salty tears.

What can readers expect?

Nora Ephron for the smoking area.

Where did the inspiration for The Project come from?

I remember what day it was exactly because it was the platinum jubilee. I’m absolutely not a royalist but I think we had a bank holiday or something so everyone was having BBQs. I was with university friends and got really drunk and ended up hooking up with a friend who is quite laddy and a bit of a nightmare. We ended up having quite a deep conversation after and I saw a different side to him. The next day I said to my friend, ‘He’s quite sweet underneath it all,’ she rolled her eyes and joked that the title of my next book should be, ‘The Reinvention of [insert name here]’ I laughed but thought — hang on, that’s quite good actually. I was trying to write something else at the time which wasn’t really going anywhere — it was about a flatshare, there wasn’t a plot really. Someone once told me that everyone’s first novel is ‘people in rooms saying intelligent things’ and that first draft was essentially that — just different characters saying things I thought were profound. I went on holiday to Greece for a solo trip and ditched the flatshare thing and this idea — about two friends giving a guy a makeover to turn him into a decent man — just started pouring out of me. I had so many feelings, about the way women are underserved by the dating climate, about men and why they are in crisis. I’d sit outside cafes under an umbrella and type away until lunch and then I’d eat greek salads and garlicky prawns and then I’d go in the sea and I’d do more in my room later. It’s important to emphasise the guy is not James, there’s some of him there, but also some of a lot of other men, who I’ve dated, who I’m friends with, because James is unfortunately exactly the sort of man I am drawn to.

Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?

I loved writing the sex scenes. I wanted to make them really long because they’re always the most fun bit. I don’t know why we don’t just put really long sex scenes in everything?

Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?

It was quite hard to get the balance right of how much of a dick James should be. I wanted the book to be fun so I didn’t want him to feel unforgivable or for the reader to wonder why these two girls would be wasting all their time on him. I didn’t want him to be an incel or a misogynist, but I wanted him to be bad enough that he would go through a significant change throughout the book and genuinely be a good person by the end. It’s a difficult balance because most women have had some really traumatic experiences with men, there’s that damning statistic that over 97 percent of women have been sexually harassed. When you talk about your experiences they sound deeply disturbing, but at the same time they’re very common, and the men we know will be doing them too, it’s not this far flung predator. I thought a lot about things I’ve gone through, things my friends have as well, things guys I know have spoken about regretting doing, and I tried to write something that was real and fair, a lot of people keep telling me the book is very nuanced so I think I got there! Early on there’s a scene where Daisy and James have just slept together (that happens at the beginning of the book so this is not a spoiler) and another night when she’s drunk she booty calls him and he turns up drunk and immediately tries to initiate sex in quite a pushy way, when she withdraws he’s arsey about it, is quite like, well I came all this way…what did you expect… it’s something that is definitely not okay but again, quite normal, these were the sorts of experiences I wanted to look at and unpack.

This is your debut novel! What was the road to becoming a published author like for you?

I am always immensely critical during the writing process, I will beat myself up, say it’s not good enough, compare myself to other writers, it got to the point where I would open my laptop and have a stress cry so then I had to become one of those demented self-care people who does affirmations, like wakes up and says to themselves in the mirror, YOU ARE VALID, YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY, all very embarrassing, but we got there and I’m so happy with what I’ve made. 

Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up? Any you’ve read so far this year that you’ve enjoyed?

I love Gillian Flynn and I haven’t read her new one yet so I’m excited for that. Favourites so far this year are Hisham Matar My Friends, Jo Hamya The Hypocrite, Joseph Andras Tomorrow They Won’t Dare to Murder Us.

Will you be picking up The Project? Tell us in the comments below!

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