I'll be talking about my new book Killing God at a Spinebreakers Live event 10.30am - 4.30pm, 21 July, at The Carriageworks, 3 Millennium Square, Leeds LS2 3AD
The teen team behind spinebreakers.co.uk will be hosting a day of creative workshops, including: Film and Photography, Creative Writing and Graphic Novel making.

And, if you love live music, Lion Cub have been booked to entertain you over lunch.
Tickets: £5
Times: 10.30am - 4.30pm

Booking: To book your ticket, call the Carriageworks on 0113 224 3801

on saturday 4 july i'll be appearing (with the wonderful spinebreakers) at the 2morro festival in london. it's at the movieum, county hall, riverside building, london se1, and i'll be there from around 10 til 12.30

inside me (1)

This is a story about me, that’s all.

(i take my time away
and i see something
and that’s my story)

This is me.

head on


OK, first thing – my name is Dawn Bundy.

Second thing – I’m fifteen years (and seven days) old.

Third thing – I live with my mum in an ordinary house on an ordinary street in an ordinary town in England.

Fourth thing – I’m totally unattractive and I don’t give a shit.

Fifth thing – I also tend to exaggerate sometimes, and this is probably one of those times. Which probably means that I am unattractive, but I’m not totally unattractive (i.e. I’m not eye-burstingly hideous or anything). I’m just kind of non-delectable, if you know what I mean. I have no discernible shape. No womanly, curvy, magazine-girly shape. Basically, I’m just kind of round and plain and lumpyish. So, yes, of course, I do give a shit that I’m not delectable. I’d love to be delectable – Little Miss Pretty, Little Miss Hot, Little Miss Look-At-Me-And-I’ll-Make-You-Quiver. Who wouldn’t want to be like that? I mean, beauty isn’t just skin deep, is it? Beauty (and non-beauty) is belly deep, heart deep . . . it’s life-definingly deep.

Anyway, all I’m trying to say is that I know I’m not beautiful, and that’s all there is to it.

Sixth thing – my mum’s name is Sara and she’s forty-nine years old.

Seventh thing – my dad’s name is John and he disappeared two years ago.

And last thing – today is the first day of January, the start of a brand-new year. And tomorrow I’m going to start killing God.

my little underground


It doesn’t mean anything, OK? Killing God – it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a thing, that’s all. Just an idea, something to do, something to keep me occupied. (And, no, it’s not a New Year’s Resolution either.) I just like doing things that keep my mind off the things I don’t want to think about (or, to be more specific, the thing I don’t want to think about). Last year, for example, towards the end of summer, I did this thing with painted snails. What it was, I was out in the back garden one night, picking up some dog poos (I’ll tell you about my dogs later on), and it’d been raining all day, so everything was all wet and horrible, and I happened to notice that the garden path was covered in snails. There were loads of them – all sliming around on the rain-soaked concrete, snailing here and snailing there . . . and it got me thinking. I had no idea what I was thinking about, but I didn’t really mind. I was happy enough just standing there in the rainy summer night, with a dog-poo bag in my hand, watching the slow-motion dance of the snails, just thinking, thinking, thinking . . . thinking about nothing in particular.

And then it hit me.

Letters.

Letters, words, messages.

Snail communication.

What would happen, I wondered, if I collected a load of snails, painted letters on their shells, and then released them back into the garden? I mean, what would I find when I went out into the garden the next night? Would the snails know they had letters on their backs? Would they arrange themselves so that the letters spelled out snaily messages to me? HULLO DAWN. WE LUV U (I imagine that snails are very poor spellers). Or maybe the painted snails would slope off into the gardens next door and spell out messages to my neighbours. U BAD. WE KIL U.

And so, with that in mind (and smiling to myself), I dropped the dog-poo bag into the bin, called my dogs, and went back inside to start working it all out. It didn’t take long. All I needed was some fluorescent paint, a fine paintbrush, a cardboard box and some snails. The only tricky bit was trying to decide how many letters I should use to make it work – i.e. how many As, how many Bs, how many Cs, and so on. Like in Scrabble, you know? I mean, you don’t just have equal numbers of every letter, do you? Because some l