Marni Appleton on Spotlights, Mirrors and the Art of the Title

"It builds to women and girls choosing to hide their mouths because of the effect of this trend...things just morph and take on different meanings as they're shared in different contexts"

Marni Appleton is here to talk about her collection of short stories, I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY, published by The Indigo Press.

The modern world Marni presents to us in her stories is one that feels incredibly liberating, but then hinged by archaic attitudes from the past all at the same time. Women go viral on social media for seemingly innocent reasons; open and polyamorous relationships that suddenly feel shut; roles in theatre feel too close to real life. Marni holds a PhD in creative writing from the University of East Anglia. Her writing has been published in Banshee, The Tangerine, Contemporary Women’s Writing. This is her first collection.

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Rippling points
2.00 - The women that inspired the stories
4.08  - Giving the characters control or not
5.41 - Moments in the Spotlight
8.26 - Marni’s bold story titles

10.47 - Public and private selves

13.17 - Social media and the writer

14.15 - Theatre in Marni’s stories

18.10 - The different lives characters have

20.15 - How Marni writes about men

23.10 - The significance of mirrors

25.30 - Safe spaces

27.07 - Different registers and discourses

29.16 - Marni's journey to getting the book published.

Reference Points

Melissa Febos
Taylor Swift