My 2021 book Eve is a heavy book in more than one sense. It is a 220 page exploration of love, friendship, family, the natural environment and the end of the world. I worked hard on creating a gorgeous print that reflects Yorkshire colours, also it has a map inside the front cover based on Yorkshire topography.

Eve is a piece of political writing about the changing climate in the UK— a zeitgeist shift of a book, about the political confusion and polarisation that has driven our little country for the last few years and shows no sign of disappearing, and the changing weather that is affecting people all over the world. I hope you get to read it before humanity is swept away.

I used a combination of handmade and digital drawing, sampling a palette from photographs of North Yorkshire – especially Ilkley Moor and Haworth Moor, where I love to go walking so that Eve looks and feels like an adventure through a dark and brooding Northern landscape.

Watch this video to hear me reading the prologue.

Nice things people have said about Eve

‘The sickly quiet before the storm…big, imaginative and confrontational’ Strong Words Magazine

‘EVE’s gripping narrative and poetic, haunting imagery of a world sliding into dystopia has stayed with me.’ Moma.co.uk

‘As with all good speculative fiction, it predicts a set of circumstances that are rooted in reality so could easily happen, and often do’ Big Issue North

Articles about Eve

You can read all about my process in this excellent interview all about Eve on Moma.uk You can read an extensive interview with me in Issue 1391 of Big Issue North

Eve was supported by Arts Council England and published by Virago Press.

My 2015 book Becoming Unbecoming is a 200 page exploration of the misogynistic attitudes in 1970s and 1980s Yorkshire that damaged my childhood and prevented a misogynist police force from investigating a series of murders properly.

Becoming/Unbecoming explores what it means to grow up a girl in an atmosphere of shame, misogyny, violence and silence in West Yorkshire between 1975 and 1981. Many women and girls, men and boys, have read my book and it has helped them to think about sexual violence in a different way. Sometimes it has helped them to come to terms with their own past and their own present. Many of you have contacted me. Thank you for all your messages.

“My name is Una. Meaning one, one life, one of many. What can I tell you about myself? Well, I once learned to play Mull of Kintyre on the guitar. Other kids teased me but I genuinely thought it was a nice song.”

Becoming Unbecoming was published by Myriad Editions in the UK in 2015 and Canada/USA in 2016. It is translated into Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Turkish. Becoming Unbecoming has been featured on BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour, Open Book, Oprah.com, Newsweek, Elle Magazine, New York Times, Elle Magazine, Guardian, El Pais.

Nice things people have said about Becoming Unbecoming:

“Hi Una, I just finished “Becoming, Unbecoming”, and it absolutely astounded me, I finished it in one sitting. I am a repeated survivor of sexual violence, and I have never felt so angry, so uplifted, and so validated, and I don’t have the words to thank you for writing this. I feel hopeless and that violence against me is inevitable, but you make me hope that things will keep getting better, and one day I can make art as powerful as yours. Thank you for sharing your story; it means the world to me.” A user of this website

“In one bravura sequence, she renders 72 police portraits of West Yorkshire women’s attackers from that era in her own hand. In aggregate, they’re unmistakably depictions of Sutcliffe: “just another violent male, staring them in the face.” Douglas Wolk, New York Times

“Touching, moving, and tackling a really serious subject. A wonderful, wonderful book.” Jenni Murray, presenter, BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour

“An absolute sensation: One of my favourite books of the year, and possibly the best graphic novel I’ve ever read.” The F-Word blog

“Incredibly powerful and poetic meditation/memoir on growing up under the shadow of the 70s. Ending just left me reeling.” Kieron Gillen

“Delicate in construction yet uncompromising in message. Becoming/Unbecoming is an astonishing testament to the power of visual metaphor.” Andy Oliver

“An incredibly powerful new graphic novel…the illustrations are beautiful.” Anna James, Elle Magazine.

Matt on Goodreads says “This book is so many things–cultural critique, memoir, experimental work of graphic art, and an absolute punch in the gut in every form it takes. Una’s unique blend of true crime reporting, thorough self reflection, hard facts/stats, and her many experiments with art/design and content contextualization make this book an extremely unique and compelling touchstone in the broader conversation about gender dynamics and gendered violence throughout the world.”

My 2018 novella Cree is set in Stanley—a small town in the rural North East area, just outside the city of Durham. The area went into decline after the closure of the British Steel plant in Consett in 1980 and further mine closures in the area after the miners strike of 1984-85.

However, there is more to Stanley than the decline of heavy industry; there is supportive community, finding ingenious ways to help one another thrive. One great way to thrive is to Be Creative, which is the name of the women’s support group, occupying an empty shop on the high street. In local dialect the group is called a “cree”. There are many “crees’ for men but only one for women at the time of writing.

You can watch a video about the history of Stanley and Consett here.

The book is 60 pages. There is a fold-out centre to show the action inside the Cree. Commissioned by New Writing North and Durham Book Festival, this is the first time this organisation has commissioned graphic work, so it was an honour to work on this commission and resulted in a beautiful book – colourful, quirky and an exercise in asymmetry with a story that walks into the book at the beginning and walks out again at the end.

Cree is based on real life stories told to me by the women of Stanley.

A 36 page, full colour comic, On Sanity: One Day In Two Lives (2016) is a story of two halves. Part 1. tells of my own experience supporting my mother on the day she was ‘sectioned’ under the mental health act. Part 2. tells my mother’s story—the same day, while she was ill with psychosis— in her own words. She has many insights into her illness and recovery.

The book was part of a project around mental ill-health and caring. There were zines workshops in collaboration with Arts and Minds Leeds to explore graphic narratives as a method of communicating about mental ill-health/recovery. Participants contributed to a collective zine titled We All Start At The Beginning. There is a blog post here about the zine.