The Crazy Truth

Dr Gemma June Howell is a multi-talented writer, poet, activist, academic and editor. She is Desk Editor at Honno, Welsh Women’s Press, Director of Women Publishing Wales – Menywod Cyhoeddi Cymru, and Associate Editor at Culture Matters. Her work has mainly appeared in the Red Poets, with her dialect poetry featuring in ‘Yer Ower Voices’ (2023). She has also been published by Bloodaxe Books (2015), The London Magazine (2020) and has featured on Tongue & Talk for BBC R4 (2021). In 2010 Gemma was a finalist for The John Tripp Award for Spoken Word. She published a volume of poetry, Rock Life (2014) and a collection of short stories Inside the Treacle Well with Hafan Books (2009). She has a PhD in Creative & Critical Writing from Swansea University. Her research focused on the disparities between social ontology and historical realism from a proletarian, feminist standpoint and led to her debut novel The Crazy Truth (Seren, 2024). Her work could be described as transgressional fiction which delves into the complexities of working-class identity in post-industrial Britain. She is an advocate for equality, representation and social equality in politics, publishing and the arts.