I first learned about Eleanor Coade and her stone in an art history class at UCLA. I came to London the next year as an exchange student and visited several sites with Coade stone. Then other interests – and life – intervened; decades passed. In early 2020 I was invited to a celebration weekend with friends at The Landmark Trust’s holiday property Belmont House in Lyme Regis. Reading about the building on the Trust’s website, I learned it had been rebuilt by Coade and covered in her stone. I remembered my youthful fandom and was thrilled to be staying in her former home.
The weekend was fabulous; the building is amazing. Even the first night I felt This is my novel; her story is worth telling. When I returned to London I bought Alison Kelly’s Mrs Coade’s Stone, to begin the research. And good thing too, as we immediately went into lockdown!
I was born and raised in Los Angeles, but have been a Londoner for most of my life. I have worked as a theatre director, installation artist and playwright. I have had attachments at the National Theatre Studio, poetry and play commissions and writing residencies at Barts Hospital and BDP architects. I am passionate about art, architecture, travel and Spanish, and often haunt Mexico City. The Firing is my first novel.