Introducing: Jasmin Kirkbride

Jasmin Kirkbride is an imaginative story writer and the author of two short stories on our website – the fantasy-like The Cloud Loom and The Locust Theorem, a tale about chasing your dreams.

Jasmin’s short stories has been published in various magazines, including Open Pen and Haverthorn. Her flash fiction has been shortlisted for the Kilburn Literary Festival Flash Fiction competition, as well as winning the TSS Monthly 500 contest. Jasmin has written a series of self-help books aimed at young adults, including Stress Less, Believe in Yourself, Boost, and Don’t Panic. Jasmin’s writing is represented by Sandra Sawicka at Marjacq literary agency. She is currently working on her first novel.

Jasmin has an MA in Ancient History from King’s College London and works as a publisher.

A short Q&A with Jasmine Kirkbride can be seen below:

Q: If you could travel in the past, which one of the great writers would you like to meet and why?

A: It would be impossible to answer this question without having some kind of chrono-dimensional feast. I’d have it in the mythical hanging gardens of Babylon, serve Roman delicacies, and everyone would lie on couches in glorious robes, Byzantine-style. I would invite George Orwell, Sylvia Plath, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Cicero, and a smattering of Milesian philosophers. Obviously, we’d all have universal translators implanted, or it wouldn’t work. I’d just love to be a fly on the wall for that group of minds setting the world to rights.

Q: Is there a book that you keep going back to and how many times have you read it?

A: It varies throughout my life: in my teenage years, I couldn’t get enough of Catch-22, Weaveworld and The Road; my early twenties were The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Down and Out In Paris and London; my mid-twenties are all about Three Moments of an Explosion and anything by Kurt Vonnegut and Terry Pratchett.

I think revisiting books is about the phase you’re in – if you’re a growing human being, there’s only so long a book can be a mirror or window for you. Really great books transcend that; they transform with you, offering new facets up to you as you understand more about life. The way I read The Road now is not the way I read it as a seventeen-year-old.

Q: If you could teleport yourself anywhere, real or fictional, where would it be and why?

A: There’s a hill in the middle of Amman that is covered in the ruins of an ancient acropolis. At sunset, the stone turns Petra-rose, and you can hear the call-to-prayer from every mosque in the city echoing up through the hills and streets, mingling together into one great song. It’s very peaceful and magical, like someone’s about to pull the curtain back on reality. I’d go back there anytime.