Poet Jay Whittaker is currently working on her story: Altered patterns: a sewing memoir. ‘Ten years after my civil partner’s untimely death and my subsequent treatment for breast cancer, I finally unzip a holdall of hand-made clothes I’ve long avoided. Inside the bag, stitched into every seam, are stories: of the women who taught me to sew, of LGBTQ+ life during a half-century when so much changed, of family secrets, exclusions, and silences. Despite ill-suited patterns and instructions which left out key points, I fashioned my own means of survival, one outfit at a time. The memoir explores how queer people are woven into their families, why we are sometimes ripped out, and how we are painstakingly stitched back in.’

Jay Whittaker has lived and worked in Edinburgh since 1995 and Scotland is very much home, though she grew up much further south, in Devon and Nottingham.

Jay prioritised her writing in her mid-40s after her civil partner died and she started cancer treatment. ‘I didn’t meet many other people like me – queer-widowed, finding my way through cancer-land.’

Jay is an award-winning poet with two full length collections, Sweet Anaesthetist, (Cinnamon Press, 2020) and Wristwatch, (Cinnamon Press, 2017), which was Poetry Book of the Year 2018 in Scotland’s National Book Awards.

Jay’s Website: https://jaywhittaker.uk/
Jay on Instagram/Threads: @jaywhittapoet

Jay Whittaker is represented at Jenny Brown Associates by Lisa. For all enquiries contact lisa@jennybrownassociates.com.