Sitemap - 2025 - Mixed Messages

Gracie Oddie-James: “I don't want to feel like I'm claiming something I don't have the qualifications for”

Megan Jayne Crabbe: “Who better to see both sides than someone in the middle of things?”

Mixed Messages Extra: An extract from Megan Jayne Crabbe's We Don't Make Ourselves Smaller Here, plus win a copy

Nxdia: “You can’t accept me into a society in which I already exist”

Stephenson Ardern-Sodje: “You are what you are in conversation with the rooms you're in”

Mixed Messageboard: June 2025

Danny James King: “My identity will never be in response to somebody else”

Mixed Messages Live is back for 2025!

William Hunter: “My experience of my own race is how it is read to me by other people”

Katie Goh: “You can't live through other people's eyes”

Mixed Messages Extra: Read an extract from Sama Sama, plus win a copy

Julie Lin: “You are valid by being who you are”

Mixed Messageboard: May 2025

Deepa Paul: “I wanted to belong, but the gap was too wide”

Mixed Messages Extra: Read an extract from A Wilder Way

Poppy Okotcha: “I'm stepping away from describing my heritage in terms of colour”

Aube Rey Lescure: “My places of comfort are where I walk down the street and no one looks twice”

Mixed Messages Extra: Win a copy of The Ministry of Time

Kaliane Bradley: "There is so much space, so much capaciousness"

Mixed Messageboard: April 2025

Theo Angel: “To finally be my whole self meant a lot”

Callie Kazumi: “Why did I keep this side of me hidden when it's something to be proud of?”

Mixed Messages Extra: Read a short story from A Beautiful Lack of Consequence, plus win a copy

Paris Smith: “You have to work to engage with your culture when it’s not so permanent”

Mixed Messages Extra: Read an extract from The Portrait Artist, plus win a copy

Dani Heywood-Lonsdale: “Growing up, there wasn't an urge or necessity to define ourselves”

Marsha Thomason: “I feel a sense of pride and allegiance to my Black people”

Mixed Messageboard: March 2025

Helen Comerford: “You don't get to tell me who I am”

Jennie Roberts: “I don't want to look like them, I love looking like me”

Sharada Keats: “I'm forced to think about things that fade into the background for others”

Mixed Messages Extra: “The act of eating is not the act of understanding and healing”

Athena Kugblenu: “I always understood I wasn't where I came from”

Mixed Messageboard: February 2025

Mixed Messages Extra: Read an extract from Bethnal Green, plus win a copy

Amélie Skoda: “My name is my only connection to an invisible part of my identity”

Mixed Messages Extra: Win a copy of Disappoint Me

Johny Pitts: “I’m not grateful to be here, it’s my right”

Karla Marie Sweet: “There’s a lot of lines I’ve had to tread”

Welcome back to Mixed Messages 2025!