Madeline (Maddy) Routon is a writer and geographer from Los Angeles, currently based between Manchester and London.
By day, she researches feminist housing activism and creative placemaking strategies in London and Barcelona. By night, she’s continually picking apart relationship dynamics with the girlies (girlies is, in this context, a gender-neutral term). Her fiction and creative nonfiction can primarily be found in DIY publications and zines, both on and offline.
Her forthcoming collection of essays, I Did It To Myself, deals primarily with themes of love, desire, degradation, and fantasy. Framed as unsent letters to a particularly tumultuous crush, they weave personal narratives from her own relationships and those of her friends. The essays, like the experience, are meant to be funny, strange, strained, and united by an understanding that desire is complicated, and people often behave in unpredictable, inexplicable ways.
Photo credit: Issey Gladston