Image: Sheena Patel

Sheena Patel is a writer and assistant director for film and TV who was born and raised in North West London. She's part of the poetry collective 4 Brown Girls Who Write and her debut novel I'm A Fan will be published by Rough Trade Books on 5 May 2022. Sheena is also among The Observer's 10 best debut novelists of 2022.

4 Brown Girls Who Write have given performances and talks across the UK and internationally, including at the British Library, Tate, Southbank Centre, the Muscat Literature Festival, and as a support act for Sleaford Mods. Their work has been featured on Poetry Unbound and British Vogue.

In I'm A Fan single speaker uses the story of their experience in a seemingly unequal, unfaithful relationship as a prism through which to examine the complicated hold we each have on one another. With a clear and unforgiving eye, the narrator unpicks the behaviour of all involved, herself included, and makes startling connections between the power struggles at the heart of human relationships and those of the wider world, in turn offering a devastating critique of access, social media, patriarchal heteronormative relationships, and our cultural obsession with status and how that status is conveyed.

When explaining I'm A Fan, Sheena said ‘I wanted to write the story of a person whose side it might be harder and harder to stay on. How much exposure is too much exposure and what kind of uncertainty does real honesty invoke in both me as the writer and you as the reader, what does it ask us to face?

This book is an imagined act of revenge verging on performance art. I didn’t want to write a story which glorified the speaker or rendered her trapped into a confining space of being acted upon, as a victim, either. What would it be to fulfil.'

Writer and performer Vera Chok (The Good Immigrant) interviews Sheena about her debut novel.

Vera Chok: I cannot wait to read your book, and am attracted to the promise of unapologetic anger and violence.

Sheena Patel: Thank you.
 
Vera: Do you feel that you went as far as you wanted to?

Sheena: As far as my abilities could take me at this present moment, yes. I looked off the cliff face and I jumped. It feels like I have my life on the line so I think that’s as much as you can ask.
 
Vera: A writer I love who goes where I haven’t yet dared to is Gish Jen. Who is it for you?

Sheena: I haven’t heard of that writer, I’ll look them up. For me it’s Kathy Acker and Cathy Park Hong, the former made me feel scared of books, I read Blood and Guts in High School with one eye open and a grimace on my face terrified of what was going to happen next and I read Minor Feelings in a rush because I felt so sick, it was like being yanked into Space to look down at the narrative forms we have been using and her asking if it was a legitimate pursuit.
 
Vera: Tell me what you mean about “obliteration” when it comes to attraction.

Sheena: This probably only applies to people who are bad for you, but it’s knowing you shouldn’t go back but keep going back anyway. There’s nothing there for you but you keep getting drawn in – not to romanticise it because when you’re there it is pure abject hell, very isolating but it’s an interesting place to be creatively; it’s like being held captive by your capacity for self-destruction.
 
Vera: What is the best possible response you could get from a reader who has just read the final page of your novel?

Sheena: I would want a reader to want more! Hopefully they will be sleep deprived from not being able to put it down and then spam everyone on their phone insisting they read it but telling them to buy their own copy because they can’t give theirs up.
 
Vera: How do you judge when you’re ready to share your account of personal events publicly? How do you keep yourself safe?

Sheena: Well this ‘I’ in I’m A Fan, is a fictional ‘I’ an augmented and not-real-but-real me so, the fact that I’m the one telling you the story is the way I am protected. Plus I have Nina Hervé (co-Director), Will Burns (Editor) and Kate McQuaid (Publicist) from Rough Trade Books who are my knights in shining armour.
 
Vera: Do you enjoy sharing your work, poetry or prose, live? Tell us what it feels like for you.

Sheena: Oh yeah! I’ve got more confident performing the last year, I don’t feel in a rush. I had to perform with Sleaford Mods alone because Covid – so it was unbelievable to hold a space by myself, I felt like the oxygen in the room, like all the spaces between atoms spreading out and out. Or that could be because I had to get very drunk before going up because I was petrified. It is always best to be up on stage with 4 Brown Girls Who Write, the collective I am a part of – we perform for each other, one takes the mic and the others stand back and we watch the one performing in a little harbour. We’re friends, sisters and each other’s champion. I’ve done so much growing with them and I wouldn’t be writing like this if it wasn’t for having met them.
 

Image: Sheena with the Sleaford Mods.

Vera: In Nanette, comedian Hannah Gadsby talked about the act of repeatedly performing her work trapping her in a mind state of past trauma. What do you think of this?

Sheena: I can understand how it can feel that way, the writing keeping you trapped in a place you’re trying to exorcise from. For me, it felt like meeting my Shadow, it was a releasing process. However, no one has read I’m A Fan so I have no idea what the process of it being in the light for other people to read, will be like. It was a lot of fun to write though.


Image: 4 Brown Girls Who Write, with their debut pamphlet for Rough Trade Books.

Vera: Tell me more about the phrase “brown girl”.

Sheena: It’s descriptive.
 
Vera: What are you currently excited to learn about.

Sheena: I like learning about everything, I love thinking, I like thinking with my friends.

Sheena Patel: linktr.ee/sheena.patel
Pre-order I'm A Fan by Sheena Patel: roughtradebooks.com


Image: I'm A Fan, cover art


Image: 4 Brown Girls Who Write, for Vogue.


Image: Sheena photographed by Sunna Khan.