Meet the Mentee: Gabrielle Johnson

Having announced our first 2022 mentee yesterday, we’re excited to introduce you to our second mentee: Gabrielle Johnson!

Gabrielle Johnson is a 2021 London Writers Award recipient and a member of the 2019 LGBT+ writing collective, The Future is Back. Their work has been published with Cipher Press and Fourteen Poems, received a Special Mention in the 2021 Life Writing Prize, featured at Leeds’ 2021 Virtual LGBT+ Literary Festival and won the 2021 Morrab Library Short Story Prize. Gabrelle is a barber, bartender and the Co-Founder and Editor of LGBT+ literary magazine, clavmag.

Gabrielle is thrilled to have been selected for a 2022 Extra Teeth Mentorship, and will be working with Heather to improve their novel in progress, If This Is Bliss, and their collection of short queer love stories. If This Is Bliss follows 26-year-old Billy as her partner ends their eight year relationship without crying once, and she finds herself living in a rundown flat on Holloway Road with Sid and Rhoda, who sometimes sleep together.

Exploring heritage, community and grief, If This Is Bliss is a coming-of-age novel about searching for control in the chaos of your queer twenties.

We couldn’t stop thinking about Gabrielle’s submission, and the passion they showed for improvement and refinement, and we’re really excited to be working with them over the next six months on such an exciting novel. Keep your eyes peeled for more from Gabrielle!