BIO

Anni Walsh is my real and writing life name - Anni Manhattan is my nearly but not quite disappeared hat-making life.

Retired from my lawyer’s adventures in personal injury and then criminal law  - the landmark cases included acting for the relatives of passengers killed in the Paris Air crash of 1974, then for spinal injury victims, followed by acting for defendants accused of crimes during the Miner’s strike in the UK in 1984

Studying English literature and philosophy later in life helped me realise that there aren’t any real answers, or never just one – only more questions.

Afterwards, as a kind of antidote, I started making hats which led into a millinery career alongside my work as a lawyer. 

I also volunteer for Samaritans, a non-religious listening and e-mailing help-line for people in distress. This and the law have helped me to recognise the struggles some people experience, what may be important to focus on in life and that there’s always a way to reach out. 

I have written for many years and throughout my working life have been listening to the stories of everyone I’ve met realising that a person is comprised in part by the stories that make up their lives. 

I spend my days writing and fighting for a space of unending hours that I want and need to be able to do that, against other demands. I move between Paris and Cardiff writing every day in both places and also belong to the SUAW Paris, Montreal and Dublin writing groups. A dedicated writer.

To date I’ve completed three novels, a dozen plays and was runner up in 2016 in the international Tennessee Williams contest.

I am currently working on:

-       a novel in a new format for me

-       two plays at the request of the organizer of Moving Parts Theatre Group, Paris where I’ve had a number of plays performed to date.

-       a novel, with a Montreal-based colleague in which the processes involved in co-writing, are, special, new and exciting.

So, a writer, who has little, or no interest, in the publishing of my work, except here on the Writers Studio. Apart from a couple of plays, I’ve never sent my work out into the open and Writers Studio is the perfect forum for me to post work without thoughts or pressures of anything else. There is then the possibility that the work may be seen by an unknown reader who may want to take it further ...or at the least may be touched by something in it.

I write ...because I have to.