About / Bio
Anna Reading is a London-based author who works across books, theatre, journalism and scriptwriting. Her first literary novel, currently in press, is with Goldsmiths Press. She is the author of Autistic Dreaming: Vibrant Memory, Activism and Environment (Berghahn, 2025), Gender and Memory in the Globital Age (Palgrave, 2016), The Social Inheritance of the Holocaust: Gender, Culture and Memory (Palgrave, 2002) and Polish Women, Solidarity and Feminism (Macmillan, 1992). She co-edited and wrote The Right to Memory: History, Media, Law and Ethics (Berghahn, 2023); Cultural Memories of Nonviolent Struggles: Powerful Times(Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Save As…Digital Memories (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and The Media in Britain(Macmillan, 1999).
She co-founded the feminist theatre company Strip Search Theatre in 1988, writing and directing plays and feminist comedy that toured theatres in the UK and Poland. Her plays, performed by various companies in theatres in the UK, Ireland, Poland and India, include commissioned scripts with Wot Theatre, Low Life Community Theatre and Fuel Theatre. She has worked as a copywriter and freelance journalist writing for The European and The BBC World Service.
With a PhD in cultural memory and gender, she is Professor of Media and Cultural Industries at King’s College, University of London (2013-). She teaches on gender, activism, cultural memory and creative imaginaries. She held a Professorship in Communication Studies at the University of Western Sydney, Australia with previous academic posts at London South Bank University and University of Westminster, UK and Lodz University, Poland.
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Agent contact details
Laetitia Rutherford
Watson, Little Ltd.
Suite 315, ScreenWorks, 22 Highbury Grove, London, N5 2ER
[email protected]
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Sample of work
Autistic Dreaming. 2025
Us/two have crossed the river to the otherside. There is a path with many ways to remember. You are not alone. There is the company of the river and the sociality of the trees. There is the dialogue of the rock and the wind. There is the gliding shadow of birdsong crossing the sun and many diverse, beautiful humans making, creating, and writing. Remember, the mountain is your embodied mind. Keep going, round, not up, I shall.
Letter to my daughter. 2016.
But, perhaps you will want more: Perhaps you will dance in front of drones campaigning for the entire demilitarisation of the planet; you will do a mass women’s burrow to draw attention to the hidden rare earth mines essential for our digital gadgets that are part of the rape and pollution of our planet; perhaps you will berate me for excluding the rights of non-human persons, the wisdom of dolphins and the voices of 800 year old sentient oak trees. Perhaps you will join with Indigenous Australians and call for the reburial of the uranium stolen from the land of the Rainbow Dragon Serpent to fill the bellies of nuclear weapons. Perhaps you will call for an end to cloning, to the end of the server factories, perhaps you are part of a DIY culture making the largest quilt in the world, whilst sending personal postcards and handwritten letters as your own rebellion against what you see as the tyranny of the digital.
Kiss Punch Goodnight. 1988. Scene
Sian: There’s something wrong with you, you’re always talking about stupid things
Dawn: I’m not
Sian: You do. And you always have the same boring sandwiches every day
Dawn: I like cheese and pickle
Sian: Don’t ask for mine then. Why don’t you talk about normal things. You’re always on about some stupid book or running away, you’re stupid and boring and square, and you wear granny shoes
(School bell sounds)
Dawn: (getting up)
I know
(pause)
Sian: Sorry. Dawn?
Dawn: (walking away)
It doesn’t matter
Sian: (following)
Do you want a sweet? Dawn? Blackjack?
Dawn: Thanks
Writer's credits
FICTION
Literary Novel, Goldsmiths Press, in press
PLAYS
Kiss Punch Goodnight 1987
Want 1990
Hard Core 1990
Grandma’s Garden 1991
The Stoning 1991
Falling 1996
RP35 2004
Cacti Hearts 2009
Letter to My Daughter 2015
The Unkind 2022
NON FICTION/ACADEMIC
Autistic Dreaming Berghahn Press 2025
Gender and Memory in the Globital Age Palgrave Macmillan 2016
The Social Inheritance of the Holocaust Palgrave Macmillan 2002
Polish Women, Solidarity and Feminism, Macmillan 1992
COLLECTIONS
The Right to Memory Berghahn 2023
Cultural Memories of Nonviolent Struggles Palgrave 2015
Save As…Digital Memories, Palgrave 2009
Media in Britain, Bloomsbury 1999
RADIO
Introducing Media, 12 Part Series, script writer and presenter, BBC World Service 2002/3