Details
About Me
I'm an author of children's fiction and poetry based in Aberdeen, Scotland. I love exploring the spaces where the natural world is intertwined with the human and I'm captivated by the magic of the ocean, the forests, the mountians and the sky.
I have over a decade of experience delivering workshops, talks and educational activities to children and adults in a variety of contexts. For many years I worked as an associate artist for two educational charities, delivering creative writing and story-making sessions in schools and in comunity settings, as well as being a 1-2-1 Creative Mentor for Looked After Children. I believe that reading and writing can support young people by building confidence and empathy and can help them to process emotion and feel connected to others.
As well as working in both primary and secondary schools across England and Scotland I have delivered courses and session for clients including Aberdeen, Warwick and Salford Universities, Moniack Mhor Creative Writing Centre, NHS England, the Scottish Book Trust and the Royal Literary Fund.
My writing has been widely published and highly acclaimed. I have won The Moth Nature Writing Prize, been shortlisted for the Highland Book Prize and Highly Commended in the Ginkgo Prize for Ecopoetry. I've appeared at events and festivals across the UK and internationally as far afield as Canada and Nigeria. As the lead artist with spoken and music project The Unsung I wrote and toured two gig theatre productions with a live band to venues including Underbelly at the Edinburgh Fringe and The Roundhouse in London.
→ I am fully DBS (England) and PVG (Scotland) checked
→ I have public liability insurance up to £2million
→ I'm based in the north-east of Scotland but I regularly work across Scotland and England so I can easily travel to locations such as Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, Sheffield, York, Newcastle, Manchester and Leeds. I'm also happy to accept enquiries outsuide these areas.
Books for Children
The Ocean and the Bones is a prehistoric adventure story about how to find truth in a world where suspicions abound and storms rage. It uses the context of Neolithic Britain to tell tale about the power of community and standing up for what's right in a landscape of climate change and division.
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Friendship is tough in the Stone Age, especially when your best friend is part-Water Spirit…
Ever since Little Meg became Sunhealer's Shadow, she's been learning to understand the ways of the Spirits. So when a storm sweeps through her village, she knows they are angry. Worse still, they are angry with her for keeping back the bones she was meant to offer up to them. The bones of her dead parents.
As the rain clears, Meg discovers a girl washed up on the seashore. She speaks in a strange language and scratches pictures of distant lands in the sand. Despite the suspicious mutterings of the villagers, the pair forge an unlikely friendship. But if Meg wants to appease the Spirits and save her people, she must return the girl to her home.
Their journey will take them across the wild sea, to a place that exists only in legends. But will Meg survive to tell the tale?
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This story is perfect for children aged 8-12 and ties in with many topics that are relevant to the curriculum, as well as themes that are vital for young people today, such as:
→ British Prehistory (the Stone Age / the Neolithic)
→ Discrimination and prejudice
→ Friendship
→ Climate change and environment
Reviews
'A dazzling read –this book transported me headlong into the Stone Age and returned me home with a bigger, warmer, wilder heart. A tenderly told adventure about opening your heart to strangers and accepting people for who they are - a tale for our age and all the ages.' Sophie Kirtley, author of The Wild Way Home
'A rich and heart-warming adventure steeped in Stone Age history, while still telling a relatable, everyday story of understanding, friendship, and respect that children will recognise and love.' Hannah Gold, author of The Last Bear
'Beautifully researched and imagined, inhabiting a liminal and long-forgotten space. Utterly compelling.' Zillah Bethell, author of The Shark Caller
'A brilliant debut about water spirits, the stories that bind us, and our connection to nature.' Maisie Chan, author of Danny Chung Does Not do Maths
Poetry Books
→ Birds / Humans / Machines / Dolphins
The result of a residency with the University of Aberdeen's School of Biological Sciences responding to ecological fieldwork studying seabirds and dolphin populations in Orkney and North-East Scotland. I also collaborated with composer Lucie Treacher to create the EP Hydrophonica, blending spoken word and music with underwater field recordings of bottlenose dolphins.
→ Landsick
Landsick inverts the idea of seasickness – in this pamphlet it is the lives we lead on land that are unstable, uncertain and often nauseous, while the ocean’s rhythm provides moments of solace, rest or hope. This a book that embraces the beauty and joys of the natural world, while also reflecting on the perils and complexities of human life, and takes us 'all the way to the bottom of the deep blue sea'.
→ A Beautiful Way to be Crazy
A Beautiful Way to be Crazy – the show – wove together spoken word, live music, verbatim audio clips and a few genuine teenage diary entries. It was a tale of growing up and finding a voice from poet Genevieve Carver which toured with her multi-instrumental live band. This book features the poems from this wonderful show, alongside some of my performance poetry pieces.
Reviews
'Deeply funny and very sad at the same time. The ironic and the tender are perfectly fused, and formal innovations are cleverly tethered to meaning. Both the birds and the language were thrillingly – and in unexpected ways – alive.' Max Porter, author of Grief is a Thing With Feathers
'Carver joyrides the nature poem through weird and wonderful territories'. Isabel Galleymore, author of Significant Other
'Brilliant, verging on genius.' The Wee Review
'Arguably one of the most powerful voices of the Fringe.' EdFringe Review
