MA Creative Writing graduate, Jessica Andrews, has had her second novel Milk Teeth picked up by the publisher Sceptre. Andrews’ 2019 debut novel, Saltwater explored the experience of young women today and went on to win the 2020 Portico Prize, with the judges calling it a “powerful, provocative and poignant tale”.
Milk Teeth is about desire, food, shame and bodies and explores how to know what we want and why we might deny ourselves those things.
Andrews says: “I wrote this novel because I wanted to interrogate the notion of wanting and to consider why we might deny ourselves things. I wanted to write a sticky, tactile novel that celebrates the body while acknowledging some of the difficulties of moving through the world as a young woman struggling with her past and class identity in an attempt to feel deserving of pleasure. I am indebted to the time I spent developing my craft at Kent and the support of my tutors and peers since. They gave me a space to experiment and to find my voice, as well as building my confidence and making me feel as if my writing mattered.”
Milk Teeth will be published on 21 July 2022.