Articles

About Me

Finnuala recently moved back to Nottingham after achieving First Class in her bachelor’s in Liberal Arts at the University of Bristol. She's currently a contributing writer at the Left Lion magazine.

Finnuala's academic background in interdisciplinary humanities informs her creative approach to interpreting arts and culture. Recent pieces include an interview with Sylvia of MTN Notts, examining the role she's had in connecting Notts' street art scene to the local and international community, and an exhibition review of Kate MccGwire's Quiver, showing at the Lakeside Arts Centre. In the past, she's held a position as Travel Editor for her university's award-winning student magazine The Croft. Alongside an ongoing Substack blog, she’s published travel narratives and personal essays in Intrepid Times, Heroica, and achieved runner-up in National Geographic's Travel Writing Competition 2022. 

With interests spanning the visual arts, history and culture, and an adventurous passion for travel and the outdoors, Finnuala is also influenced by the subtle intersections between these themes. Her writing style aims to combine a personal voice with grounded journalism and research. She aspires to drive stories with a human element, crafting long-form narratives that take a long view and connect readers to the heart of the story.

Whether writing about Nottingham’s local scene or looking beyond, Finnuala’s versatile and expansive skillset allows her to tackle a wide range of projects and subjects with curiosity, depth and unique focus.


Articles

Journalism, travel pieces, personal essays, and my award-winning submission to the National Geographic

Exhibition review: Quiver at Lakeside Arts

Many of MccGwire's works, particularly the spiralling arrangements of feathers in the first room, are reminiscent of the land art movement beginning in the 1960s and 1970s. Unlike those works, these are removed from the outdoor settings they typically engaged with, and playfully adapted into a contained exhibition space. By bringing them into the human realm, MccGwire’s adaptation draws out their subtle tensions: between power and submission, the human realm and the nonhuman.
The exhibition play...

Flying colours: a look inside legendary local paint shop Montana

Montana Notts has carved out a name for itself as a signature shop in the city. The shop’s diverse clientele – often long-term regulars, including students from Confetti and Nottingham College – appreciate the advice and expertise that Sylvia and Dilk offer. “Now when people call me, I know exactly what paint they need... some people have just used the same colour for the past twenty years,” Sylvia laughs. 
As well as offering a bigger, bright new space to set up in, Sylvia tells me that Sneinto...
Left Lion •

From grassroots to Fields

Made up of Lois, Charley, and brothers Alfie and Solly, Drury Hill began – in true slacker pop style – on Charley’s bedroom floor, with only an acoustic guitar between them. ‘We met in college,’ Charley tells me. A shared obsession with Mazzy Star had been at the forefront of their then-songwriting, captured in hundreds of hours of voice recordings and gradually honed during small gigs at local venues. Over a year later, and with their first EP two months old, Drury Hill’s sound is one encompass...
Heroica Website •

On Openness and Nudity

This summer, I remembered what it meant to open myself to the world. I remembered with my full body, with the exaltation of bare flesh and vulnerability, and with what felt like a freedom I had forgotten. Open, like the unfolding fingers of a sleeping hand, caught in the sunlight. Like the gentle crook of an arm, soft skin inside, the nape of a neck where the hair falls away. Like the slit of an eye, glistening under lashes to watch the same leaking blue marry the sea and sky.

I had come to res
That's What She Said •

The Women of Iran

Finnuala Brett addresses the recent humanitarian and innately feminist crisis of the treatment of women and minorities under current Iranian regimes.

I am not a woman of Iran, but I am a woman. And in my womanhood, I can ride a bike in the streets of my town, or wear shorts in summer when it’s too hot and trousers would stick to my skin. I leave the country without a man; I have sexual autonomy; if I wish to prioritise my career I will not be deemed less than the woman I could be as a wife.

“J
Epigram •

Expanding Horizons: Travel And The Changing Self

The Croft Magazine // It’s not the place you travel to, but rather your openness to a journey that can leave a lasting impact on the self. Travel challenges your perceptions of the world as it is known to you, and helps affirm your sense of place in it.

Nearly three years ago, I left home by myself for the first time. After two months of vividly new experiences, I spent the eleven hour return flight wallowing over my journal, reading and re-reading every word about every day. The thought of dri
The Charles Causley Trust •

Finnuala Brett: 'Notes From Quiet Summertime: A Chronology'

My name is Finnuala Brett and I am studying Liberal Arts at Bristol University. This piece is a refined amalgamation of diary entries that I wrote over the summer just gone. Journaling has recently become transformative for me as an opportunity for deep reflection and a way to grapple with feeling and experience.

An introspective diary that is intended to be neither wise nor intelligent; it is not anything other than itself and me.

I saw a dead bird today. Bike keys dangling between fingers, m

Editorial Work

Subediting text, layout design, photography

The Croft: Issue 2, Sin (2022), pages 20-21

The Croft: Issue 3, Sonder (2022), pages 20-21

The Croft: Issue 4, Soiree (2022), pages 30-31

The Croft: Issue 8, From the Source (2023), pages 14-15