Emma Dandy

Emma Dandy is a poet, journalist and scriptwriter currently undertaking a practice-led PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham, supervised by Dr Bohdan Piasecki and Prof Luke Kennard. Her research focuses on writing a collection of poetry and hybrid pieces that investigate the multiple narratives adopted people create for themselves in the absence of information about birth families. This new creative work is linked with a critical interrogation of the ways that adopted writers express trauma through the use of genre-bending writing styles. Emma will be presenting papers on her research at two conferences in June 2026; the 41st International Society for the Study of Narrative Conference at Aarhus University, Denmark, and the 10th Biennial Conference of the Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture at the University of Leeds, UK. Publication of her debut poetry pamphlet I Laid Out Knives, Guns and Razors is forthcoming with Hedgehog Poetry Press. Emma's writing has been described as ’vivid, unsettling and necessary’ with ’striking language play’. Her poetry has been published in literary magazines such as Unlost Journal and eche poetry and anthologised in Echoes from the Goatshed (Goatshed Press, 2026) and Best Songs of All Time (Yaffle Press, 2026). Emma's journalism has appeared in newspapers including The Independent and The Wall Street Journal and she has appeared on various TV and radio news programmes on the BBC and elsewhere.

Adoption

Poetry

Hybrid writing

Feminism