For the sixth episode in the series, Shannon Yee reads her story ‘Love, Your Bestie’.
‘Love, Your Bestie’ is a new short piece, commissioned for NI Brussels Office ’Summer Postcards’ project. It draws on Shannon’s experiences as an expat, and details one end of a postcard exchange between two friends who are apart for the summer—one who is in Brussels and one left behind in Belfast.
Shannon Yee is an award-winning writer and producer. Her perspectives as an immigrant, ethnic minority, queer artist-parent with a disability living in NI are deeply embedded in her work. Shannon has been fortunate to receive a number of awards and grants, including the ACNI Major Individual Artist Award (2017). Reassembled, Slightly Askew is an autobiographical, audio-based artwork about Shannon’s experience of falling critically ill with a rare brain infection and her journey of rehabilitation with an acquired brain injury. It is a new kind of storytelling, never done before about this topic, that places the listener safely in the first-person perspective to increase empathy and understanding.
Shannon’s short story, ‘The Brightening Up Side’, published in Belfast Stories (Doire Press, 2019), addresses new motherhood, racism and tenacity in North Belfast. Her story, ‘Thumbnails’, was published in Queer Love: An Anthology of Irish Fiction (Southward Press, 2020) alongside Irish literary greats such as Colm Tobin, Emma Donoghue & Mary Dorsey.
She is currently working on her first collection of short stories, a BBC/The Space ‘Culture in Quarantine’ online dance film commission called Pandemic Parenting: Pandemonium, and a children’s book based on lockdown’s impact of young children’s mental health.