69 seconds with ... queer author, playwright and performer Valerie Mason-John

MEET Valerie Mason-John

Valerie Mason-John was born in 1962 in Cambridge, and uses the stage name 'Queenie'. She studied at Leeds University and later for an MA in Creative Writing at Sussex University, and is a playwright, author and performance poet. She worked as an international correspondent covering Australian aboriginal land rites. Her writing has included articles for various national publications, including The Guardian, The Voice and The Pink Paper, and she has done freelance research work for the BBC, Channel 4 and the Arts Council. She is also a former editor of Feminist Arts News, directed Pride Arts Festival for four years, and was the former artistic director of London Mardi Gras. She is also part of a team of trainers designing anger management programmes for schools.

She was an actress with the Talawa Theatre Company and in 2001 was Artist in Residence for PUSH 2001 at the Young Vic, the National Theatre and the Jerwood space in London. She has undertaken other residencies at Holloway Prison and Elizabeth Garret Anderson School. In 1998, she wrote and produced her first play, Sin Dykes. Since then her theatre writing credits have included Brown Girl in the Ring, a one-woman show which toured nationally, The Adventures of Snow Black and Rose Red, a family pantomime, and most recently, You Get Me.

Her first novel, Borrowed Body (2005), is told in the voice of Pauline, a young black girl of Nigerian descent, growing up in white foster homes and orphanages, then reclaimed by her mother. It won the 2006 MIND Book of the Year Award.

Her book Detox Your Heart (2006) is a non-fiction book dealing with anger, hatred and fear. In 1997, Valerie Mason-John was named Britain's Black Gay Icon and in 2000 won a Windrush Achievement Award for her contribution to the Black British community. She lives currently lives in Edmonton, Alberta and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in 2009 by the University of East London.

Her latest book is Broken Voices: 'Untouchable' Women Speak Out (2008).