Ms Sarah Penny
Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing

Research area(s)

• Autobiographical writing
• Women’s writing
• Postcolonial fiction
• Children’s fiction
• Female genital mutilation in Africa and the UK
• The fusion of creative writing and dramatherapy

Research Interests

Sarah’s own research is two-tiered. She writes novels for both adults and children, all of which are set in Africa.  Her adult novels focus mainly on narratives arising from sub-Saharan African liberation struggles and are set in England, Kenya, Zimbabwe and South Africa. She is currently writing a children’s series – The Bundu Bashers. The core themes of the children’s series are the preservation of endangered wildlife in African game parks, and the experiences of a young boy who becomes a traditional African healer.

She is also one half of a research collaboration, Hadithi ya Afrika (stories from Africa in kiSwahili) which uses dramatherapy to enable autobiographical storytelling in underprivileged communities in Africa.