About Amy Jardine
'I live on the East coast with my partner and son, and our cat.
'I try to write as often as I can; sometimes about small things, like my cat. Sometimes about big things: the internet, creativity, the future, good books I've read.
'I'm currently working on my first novel.'
Amy's comments
' "Night Swimming" began to form in my mind in the earliest days of my son's life. I had gone over the threshold of labour and birth, into this new world and the astonishing experience of parental love, and I felt that my mind had been freed up. I was filled with ideas and images – the auspicious chilli peppers, my baby's tiger-stripe eyes, the sea at night. It was only when I began to write it all down that I discovered how it all linked, and that the idea of swimming at night — peace and safety in a wild world — was the heart of the piece.'
Amy Jardine's commission (PDF)
(166 KB; 9 pages)
Nadine Aisha Jassat's comments
Poet, writer and creative practitioner Nadine Aisha Jassat led the Fresh Ink initiative. She writes about Amy's commission:
'Amy Jardine wraps her story around readers, exploring the power of storytelling in a year which we will be talking about for a long time to come. Amy brings in what I love most in narrative non-fiction — that little bit of magic, that faith or belief, and with it explores self and the world, love and life and death and befores and afters, and endings and beginnings. It travels landscapes of place, but also of self — and the intertwining of themes around faith and storytelling is touching and meditative. A beautiful, gentle, and thoughtful contribution.'