Christine Lawrence. Author, workshop facilitator, performer

Welcome to my website.

I write novels, short stories, poems, plays and articles, many which have been published online in Portsmouth’s Star and Crescent. I am passionate about helping people to get started in writing and have facilitated workshops with groups such as those living with addictions, mental health issues, homelessness, minoritised ethnic groups including asylum seekers and refugees.

I am known in Portsmouth for organising and performing in spoken word events and was one of the founders of T’Articulation, a group set up to encourage prose writers to get their work out there into cafes, festivals and galleries.

I was one of the writers for Cursed City Dark Tide, and a poet in Supernatural Cities’ Darkside/Portside walking tour in Portsmouth’s DarkFest 2019 and was an author in the Writing Edward King project in 2017.

My short stories are published in Portsmouth Fairy Tales for grown ups, Day of the Dead, and Pompey Writes, the best of Star and Crescent.

My three novels, all psychological thrillers, are all set locally. The first one, Caught in the Web, in a mental hospital in 1973, the second, Payback, amongst the community of those trying to recover from addictions and includes characters working in a charity shop. My latest novel, Don’t Step on the Cracks, addresses the issues that those who are homeless face.

After a long career in mental health, I was inspired to be more creative, and taking a degree in English Literature and Creative Arts at Portsmouth was a great stepping stone for me. I followed this with an MA in Creative Writing.

Portsmouth Writers Hub is a great resource which started small and has only really kept going over the past couple of years during the covid pandemic by the enthusiasm of the writers in Portsmouth.

During my nursing career, I worked throughout Portsmouth with people struggling with mental health and addictions. This community was rich with wonderful and diverse people. So many stories that had to be told. So it was natural for me to eventually write about people who were living with these issues.

Although Southsea and Old Portsmouth are probably favourite places, steeped in history, the best features of Portsmouth for me are the high rise flats, the housing estates, the small streets in Fratton and North End, the people who live in there. I love to wander throughout the city looking for cafes in less popular areas of town, watching the people and getting to know them.

Although I was born in Portsmouth, and have worked in the city for much of my life, I live in the village of Southwick which is just on the other side of Portsdown Hill. A wonderful place to live, set in the countryside, yet only a few miles from Portsmouth, the coast in one direction, Southampton a mere 30 minutes to the West, Chichester to the East, and Winchester to the North.