Writing Coercive Control

Coercive control is endemic and therefore it must be cultural. If 1 in 2 women experience coercive control, it’s in our homes in childhood. How does this affect us? And how do we talk—and write—about it? This 6-part live-recorded, interactive talk series will inspire writers and readers to explore literature about coercive control in wider contexts, including state control, parent/child relationships, historical control, and control in industry and workplace. Guest authors Sahar Delijani, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, Winnie M Li, Chimene Suleyman, Kim Moore, and Carla Jenkins, meet with host, author Abigail Tarttelin, to discuss their experiences writing coercive control.In this episode, debut novelist Carla Jenkins discusses hierarchies and power in the therapist/patient relationship, as represented in her novel FIFTY MINUTES. Therapy was meant to solve her problems, not make them worse...Twenty-year-old Dani is desperate to overcome her demons, leave her dead-end job and return to her hard-won place at university. Using her limited earnings, she decides to start seeing a psychotherapist.Richard Goode is educated, sophisticated and worldly-everything Dani aspires to be. As he intuitively unpicks her self-loathing, Dani assumes the fantasies she's developing about him live only in her head. That is, until things take a shocking turn...Descending into a maelstrom of twisted desire, manipulation and mistrust, the power struggle between Dani and Richard escalates until she's forced to make a decision she never would have anticipated.With host Abigail, Carla speaks about the aims of writing coercive control into fiction, how to take care of yourself while writing about difficult subjects, and how our cultural and youth histories of coercive control can frame our adult receptivity to it. She also discusses how easy it is to become a therapist, how the lack of oversight is putting vulnerable people at risk, and how making meaning through writing our own narratives about coercive control allows us to take back power and make sense of our experiences.Also, host Abigail looks back on the last five episodes of WRITING COERCIVE CONTROL, a podcast funded alongside her work-in-progress novel ORDINARY WOMAN TURNS 30, an autofiction novel about a woman dealing with the aftermath of coercive control in an intimate partner relationship as she approaches her 30th birthday. The previous five episodes of the pod feature discussions on state control with Sahar Delijani, parental control with Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, industry control and #metoo with Winnie M Li, domestic and romantic relationship coercive control with memoirist Chimene Suleyman, and exploring the same topic in poetry with Kim Moore. Follow Carla on Instagram here. Carla’s novel FIFTY MINUTES is available now to purchase or order through all good bookstores.Follow Abigail as she writes her novel on Substack at abigailtarttelin.substack.comSend your questions and comments for the podcast to Abigail’s https://Instagram.com/abigailtarttelin_Abigail’s novels FLICK, DEAD GIRLS, and GOLDEN BOY are available now to purchase or order through all good bookstores.This podcast is co-produced by Abigail and Clear Lines Festival. Clear Lines started in 2015 as the UK's first festival addressing sexual assault and consent through the arts and discussion. Since then, their events have continued to promote a survivor-centered dialogue that emphasizes creativity, community, and artistic self-expression. You can check out their website with videos of past events at:https://clearlines.org.uk/And sign up to their newsletter to learn about upcoming events through their network:https://clearlines.org.uk/contact-us/They also offer a free downloadable creative writing guide for survivors of sexual violence and abuse:https://clearlines.org.uk/our-free-creative-writing-guide-for-survivors-available-here/This podcast is supported by Arts Council England. Get full access to Abigail Tarttelin at www.abigailtarttelin.com/subscribe

Coercive control is endemic and therefore it must be cultural. If 1 in 2 women experience coercive control, it’s in our homes in childhood. How does this affect us? And how do we talk—and write—about it? This 6-part live-recorded, interactive talk series will inspire writers and readers to explore literature about coercive control in wider contexts, including state control, parent/child relationships, historical control, and control in industry and workplace. Guest authors Sahar Delijani, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, Winnie M Li, Chimene Suleyman, Kim Moore, and Carla Jenkins, meet with host, author Abigail Tarttelin, to discuss their experiences writing coercive control.In this episode, poet Kim Moore discusses writing her own lived experiences of coercive control and domestic violence into poetry and creative non-fiction in her works IF WE COULD SPEAK LIKE WOLVES, THE ART OF FALLING, ALL THE MEN I NEVER MARRIED, and ARE YOU JUDGING ME YET? POETRY AND EVERYDAY SEXISM. Kim Moore’s pamphlet If We Could Speak Like Wolves was a winner in the 2011 Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition. Her first collection The Art of Falling(Seren 2015), which includes a quietly devastating sequence following a woman embroiled in a relationship marked by coercion and violence, won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Her second collection All The Men I Never Married (Seren, 2021), in which 48 numbered poems take us through a gallery of exes and significant others where we encounter rage, pain, guilt, and love, won the 2022 Forward Prize for Best Collection. Her first non-fiction book What The Trumpet Taught Me was published by Smith/Doorstop in May 2022. She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.A hybrid book of lyric essays and poetry Are You Judging Me Yet? Poetry and Everyday Sexism was published by Seren in March 2023. Essays tackle subjects that range from heckling at poetry readings, problems with the male gaze and explorations of what the female gaze might look like in poetry and discussions about complicity, guilt and objectification, the slipperiness of the word sexism and whether poetry can be part of transformational change.With host Abigail, Kim speaks about the importance of meaning-making, the fragmented nature of poetry paralleling the fragmented nature of traumatic memory, forms including bricolage and multiple choice in ARE YOU JUDGING ME YET?, the writing of her two poetry collections, incidences of sexism in performing her poetry, legal and safety considerations in publishing work based on her own lived experience, the circular nature of memory, writing, and experience, and how it feels to look back on her poems now. Also, host Abigail reads two poems from her own work-in-progress novel, ORDINARY WOMAN TURNS 30, an autofiction novel about a woman dealing with the aftermath of coercive control in an intimate partner relationship as she approaches her 30th birthday.Follow Kim on https://Instagram.com/kim_moore_poet Follow Kim and friend, poet Clare Shaw, on Substack at http://kimmoore30.substack.comKim’s works are available now to purchase or order through all good bookstores.Follow Abigail as she writes her novel on Substack at http://abigailtarttelin.Substack.com Send your questions and comments for the podcast to Abigail’s https://Instagram.com/abigailtarttelin_Abigail’s novels FLICK, DEAD GIRLS, and GOLDEN BOY are available now to purchase or order through all good bookstores.This podcast is co-produced by Abigail and Clear Lines Festival. Clear Lines started in 2015 as the UK's first festival addressing sexual assault and consent through the arts and discussion. Since then, their events have continued to promote a survivor-centered dialogue that emphasizes creativity, community, and artistic self-expression. You can check out their website with videos of past events at:https://clearlines.org.uk/And sign up to their newsletter to learn about upcoming events through their network:https://clearlines.org.uk/contact-us/They also offer a free downloadable creative writing guide for survivors of sexual violence and abuse:https://clearlines.org.uk/our-free-creative-writing-guide-for-survivors-available-here/This podcast is supported by Arts Council England. Get full access to Abigail Tarttelin at www.abigailtarttelin.com/subscribe

Coercive control is endemic and therefore it must be cultural. If 1 in 2 women experience coercive control, it’s in our homes in childhood. How does this affect us? And how do we talk—and write—about it? This 6-part live-recorded, interactive talk series will inspire writers and readers to explore literature about coercive control in wider contexts, including state control, parent/child relationships, historical control, and control in industry and workplace. Guest authors Sahar Delijani, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, Winnie M Li, Chimene Suleyman, Kim Moore, and Carla Jenkins, meet with host, author Abigail Tarttelin, to discuss their experiences writing coercive control.In this episode, London-based writer and co-editor of THE GOOD IMMIGRANT USA Chimene Suleyman talks about writing her memoir of an abusive relationship, THE CHAIN.In January 2017, Chimene Suleyman was on her way to an abortion clinc in Queens, New York with her boyfriend, the father of her nascent child. It was the last day they would spend together. In an astonishing sequence of events, Chimene was to discover the truth of her boyfriend's life: that she and many other women had been subtly, patiently and painfully betrayed in the most traumatic and sinister of ways.Exploring how women are duped every day by individuals, Chimene interrogates how society itself continually allows this to happen. She demonstrates that, no matter how intelligent, educated or self-aware a woman might be, over time they can be played into performing the age-old role of giver and nurturer: self-sacrificing and subordinate.Both a devastating personal testimony and a searing indictment of persistent misogyny, The Chain is a book for any woman who has questioned her relationship and buried her doubts, for any woman who can't quite identify the source of her unease and for any woman who has been sheltered by the fierce protection of her female friends.With host, author Abigail Tarttelin, Chimene talks about several aspects of the book and her work, including socialisation of women to care for men, normalising of weaponised incompetence, and how we can save ourselves from coercive control.Also, host Abigail reads from her own work-in-progress novel, ORDINARY WOMAN TURNS 30, an autofiction novel about a woman dealing with the aftermath of coercive control in an intimate partner relationship as she approaches her 30th birthday.Follow Chimene on https://Instagram.com/chimenesuleyman THE CHAIN is available now to purchase or order through all good bookstores.Follow Abigail as she writes her novel on Substack at abigailtarttelin.Substack.com Send your questions and comments for the podcast to Abigail’s https://Instagram.com/abigailtarttelin_Abigail’s novels FLICK, DEAD GIRLS, and GOLDEN BOY are available now to purchase or order through all good bookstores.This podcast is co-produced by Abigail and Clear Lines Festival. Clear Lines started in 2015 as the UK's first festival addressing sexual assault and consent through the arts and discussion. Since then, their events have continued to promote a survivor-centered dialogue that emphasizes creativity, community, and artistic self-expression. You can check out their website with videos of past events at:https://clearlines.org.uk/And sign up to their newsletter to learn about upcoming events through their network:https://clearlines.org.uk/contact-us/They also offer a free downloadable creative writing guide for survivors of sexual violence and abuse:https://clearlines.org.uk/our-free-creative-writing-guide-for-survivors-available-here/This podcast is supported by Arts Council England. Get full access to Abigail Tarttelin at www.abigailtarttelin.com/subscribe

Coercive control is endemic and therefore it must be cultural. If 1 in 2 women experience coercive control, it’s in our homes in childhood. How does this affect us? And how do we talk—and write—about it? This 6-part live-recorded, interactive talk series will inspire writers and readers to explore literature about coercive control in wider contexts, including state control, parent/child relationships, historical control, and control in industry and workplace. Guests include authors Sahar Delijani, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, Winnie M Li, and Chimene Suleyman, who will discuss their experiences writing coercive control. In this episode, The Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize-winning author and activist Winnie M Li talks about workplace coercive control in her thriller COMPLICIT, following Sarah Lai, a young woman working in the film industry in NY. and LA as she navigates toxic power dynamics, coercion, and sexual assault within the industry. With host, author Abigail Tarttelin, Winnie talks about how she drew from her own experiences working in the entertainment industry to explore why and how the dream of making it in Hollywood creates a working environment where coercive control is endemic and goes unreported. Also, host Abigail reads from her own work-in-progress novel, ORDINARY WOMAN TURNS 30, an autofiction novel about a woman dealing with the aftermath of coercive control in an intimate partner relationship as she approaches her 30th birthday.Follow Winnie on https://Instagram.com/winniemli Winnie’s novels DARK CHAPTER annd COMPLICIT are available now to purchase or order through all good bookstores.Follow Abigail as she writes her novel on Substack at abigailtarttelin.Substack.com Send your questions and comments for the podcast to Abigail’s https://Instagram.com/abigailtarttelin_Abigail’s novels FLICK, DEAD GIRLS, and GOLDEN BOY are available now to purchase or order through all good bookstores.This podcast is co-produced by Abigail and Clear Lines Festival. Clear Lines started in 2015 as the UK's first festival addressing sexual assault and consent through the arts and discussion. Since then, their events have continued to promote a survivor-centered dialogue that emphasizes creativity, community, and artistic self-expression. You can check out their website with videos of past events at: https://clearlines.org.uk/And sign up to their newsletter to learn about upcoming events through their network: https://clearlines.org.uk/contact-us/They also offer a free downloadable creative writing guide for survivors of sexual violence and abuse: https://clearlines.org.uk/our-free-creative-writing-guide-for-survivors-available-here/This podcast is supported by Arts Council England. Get full access to Abigail Tarttelin at www.abigailtarttelin.com/subscribe

Coercive control is endemic and therefore it must be cultural. If 1 in 2 women experience coercive control, it’s in our homes in childhood. How does this affect us? And how do we talk—and write—about it? This 6-part live-recorded, interactive talk series will inspire writers and readers to explore literature about coercive control in wider contexts, including state control, parent/child relationships, historical control, and control in industry and workplace. Guests include authors Sahar Delijani, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, Winnie M Li, and Chimene Suleyman, who will discuss their experiences writing coercive control. In this episode, Costa novel-shortlisted author Rowan Hisayo Buchanan talks about parental coercive control in her novel THE SLEEPWATCHER, a story of family, love and secrets about confronting the fact that the people you love most may not always be good or kind, and how violence can lurk in our safest and most familiar places. With host, author Abigail Tarttelin, Rowan discusses why she chose to explore control in both an intimate partner dynamic and a parent/child relationship from the perspective of the child in her latest novel. Also, host Abigail reads from her own work-in-progress novel, ORDINARY WOMAN TURNS 30, an autofiction novel about a woman dealing with the aftermath of coercive control in an intimate partner relationship as she approaches her 30th birthday.Follow Rowan on https://Instagram.com/rowanhisa Rowan’s novels HARMLESS LIKE YOU, STARLING DAYS, and THE SLEEPWATCHER are available now to purchase or order through all good bookstores.Follow Abigail as she writes her novel on Substack at abigailtarttelin.Substack.com Send your questions and comments for the podcast to Abigail’s https://Instagram.com/abigailtarttelin_Abigail’s novels FLICK, DEAD GIRLS, and GOLDEN BOY are available now to purchase or order through all good bookstores.This podcast is co-produced by Abigail and Clear Lines Festival. Clear Lines started in 2015 as the UK's first festival addressing sexual assault and consent through the arts and discussion. Since then, their events have continued to promote a survivor-centered dialogue that emphasizes creativity, community, and artistic self-expression. You can check out their website with videos of past events at: https://clearlines.org.uk/And sign up to their newsletter to learn about upcoming events through their network: https://clearlines.org.uk/contact-us/They also offer a free downloadable creative writing guide for survivors of sexual violence and abuse: https://clearlines.org.uk/our-free-creative-writing-guide-for-survivors-available-here/This podcast is supported by Arts Council England. Get full access to Abigail Tarttelin at www.abigailtarttelin.com/subscribe

Coercive control is endemic and therefore it must be cultural. This 6-part live-recorded, interactive talk series will inspire writers and readers to explore literature about coercive control in wider contexts, including state control, parent/child relationships, historical control, and control in industry and workplace. Upcoming guests include authors Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, Winnie M Li, and Chimene Suleyman, who will discuss their experiences writing coercive control. In this episode, bestselling-author Sahar Delijani talks about her family history of political activism and imprisonment in Iran. Sahar was born in Evin prison, where her mother was a political prisoner in the early 1980s. Her novel CHILDEN OF THE JACARANDA TREE and work-in-progress follow-up THE LUMINOUS BLUE are inspired by her family’s story. With host, author Abigail Tarttelin, Sahar discusses why she chooses to explore state coercive control in Iran in her books. Also, host Abigail reads from her own work-in-progress novel, ORDINARY WOMAN TURNS 30, an autofiction novel about a woman dealing with the aftermath of coercive control in an intimate partner relationship as she approaches her 30th birthday.Follow Sahar Delijani on https://Instagram.com/SaharDelijani Sahar’s novel THE CHILDREN OF THE JACARANDA TREE is available now to purchase or order through all good bookstores.Follow Abigail as she writes her novel on Substack at abigailtarttelin.Substack.com Send your questions and comments for the podcast to Abigail’s https://Instagram.com/abigailtarttelin_Abigail’s novels FLICK, DEAD GIRLS, and GOLDEN BOY are available now to purchase or order through all good bookstores.This podcast is co-produced by Abigail and Clear Lines Festival. Clear Lines started in 2015 as the UK's first festival addressing sexual assault and consent through the arts and discussion. Since then, their events have continued to promote a survivor-centered dialogue that emphasizes creativity, community, and artistic self-expression. You can check out their website with videos of past events at: https://clearlines.org.uk/And sign up to their newsletter to learn about upcoming events through their network: https://clearlines.org.uk/contact-us/They also offer a free downloadable creative writing guide for survivors of sexual violence and abuse: https://clearlines.org.uk/our-free-creative-writing-guide-for-survivors-available-here/This podcast is supported by Arts Council England. Get full access to Abigail Tarttelin at www.abigailtarttelin.com/subscribe