Jenni Fagan (1977) is a Scottish writer of about every imaginable genre: novels, poetry, drama, essays, short stories. She is also a keen blogger, publishing as ‘The Dead Queen of Bohemia’, and is currently the ‘writer in residence’ for the Creative Writing programme at the University of Edinburgh. In her (partly autobiographical) debut novel, The Panopticon, she tells the story of a teenage girl stuck in ‘care’ – moving from foster family to foster family, ending up in a ‘home’ for chronic young offenders. We are introduced to a life that has been filled with drugs, abuse and sex from a ridiculously young age. The novel was highly appraised and will be made into a major motion picture in 2016. In 2013, Fagan was included in the prestigious Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists list. “Zephyrs” is an excerpt from her second novel (as yet unpublished).