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Writing on Nation.Cymru Jon Gower finds much to admire in Zoë Brigley's new essay collection. 'Throughout this collection Brigley is challengingly open about her own life. Which turns out to have had its challenges especially because, as a young writer she found it hard to write about personal material, which she described as a ‘writerly shyness.’ As a young woman she found herself in an abusive relationship with an older man. So the essays prove she has overcome both and now faces her fears head-on. 'These Notes from a Swing State are written with an openness to ideas redolent of...

Zoë Brigley's essay collection Notes from a Swing State has had two recent, favourable reviews in the latest issues of Planet and the welsh agenda. 'If, as for Raymond Williams, great shifts in time and society are a picking up and setting back down again, then surely we are currently within just such an undefined state, the consequences of which are unknown until the settling and evaluating that comes with the aftermath. The swing state of this new collection of essays by Zoë Brigley is not only Ohio and the Electoral College, but self, home, nationhood and identity. Body, mind and...