Photograph by Fuschia Linsley.

I'm a creative writer and multimedia artist. I like making work across a range of different media about topics as diverse as queerness, sexuality, ecology, the climate crisis, medicine, mental health, psychiatry, the human body, technology, machines, AI, the sensory, food, flowers, and death—to name but a few of those that fascinate me. 

I'm particularly drawn to exploring, and often making sense of, my own psychological experiences be it directly, in creative nonfiction forms such as essays, articles, and reviews, or one step removed, refracted through the drag queen like avators of my different fictional characters in novels and short stories. 

"Rosa was sleek and shiny. Boxy, and cherry red. She was long, low, and squat with three group heads, two milk steaming wands, two pressure dials, and one hot water spout. We could fit ten rows of cups and mugs and glasses for flat whites on top of her lovely perforated rack."

I'm getting back into writing fiction. My short story 'Rosa', about a barista who falls in love with the coffee machine at her cafe, is under review for publication. 

I'm currently working on my first book, The Hatches, a coming-of-age story about unequal access to swimming water and the rollercoaster that is queer confusion set over two months of a scorching hot countryside summer.

My six part serial 'Lithium Mania' was comissioned by the Wellcome Collection in 2021. It was the first research project to seriously investigate the socio-environmental side effects of mining lithium as a medication for bipolar disorder. I hope to again collaborate with the Wellcome Collection on documenting my lithium journey. I want to investigate the lithium mining that is taking place where I live in Cornwall (the only county where commercial surveying is underway in the UK) whilst I document the somatic, psychological, emotional, and even sexual process of 'delithifying', or gradually coming off the lithium carbonate I've been taking for six years.

Essays and articles including 'Maladaptive Daydreaming, Gender Myths, and Me' and 'The Medical Metaphors of Visual Snow' have been respectively published by the Wellcome Collection and medical humanities journal The Polyphony, amongst others.

I edit and write book reviews for Medical Humanities for the British Medical Journal. My reviews have also appeared in New Scientist and Photo Monitor.

My solo performances have been broadcast on BBC Sounds (link expired) and featured by Cambridge University Museums. I collaborate on audio art with sound designer Alice Boyd. We were selected for In the Dark's 'New Voices' of 2022.

'Honeymoon' and 'Atrophy' for 'Lithium Mania' published by Wellcome Collection's 'Stories' in September 2021.Words and narration by Laura Grace Simpkins. Composition and sound design by Alice Boyd. Photography by Matjaž Krivic.

I'm looking for fiction and nonfiction representation. If you're interested in my work, I'd love for you to get in touch.

lauragsimpkins@gmail.com