



I have a Pass with Distinction in MA Fashion Journalism and Promotion and a variety of published writings over 20 years to my name, including The Independent, The Observer, Vogue, Esquire, Channel 4, and The Huffington Post.
Initially a freelance fashion journalist, I diversified into the arts, contributing reviews to Disability Arts Online and British Deaf News among others, later branching out into political and campaigning issues via blogging. I’ve also edited several publications online and in print, most notably the first mini-edition of The Fashion Book (published by Phaidon Press).
In the capacity of Founder-Director of Salon – a deaf-led visual arts project funded by Arts Council England and the Esmee Fairfairn Foundation – I edited, wrote and produced The Lounge, an in-house quarterly hybrid bulletin.
Following my daughter’s diagnosis with cerebral palsy, I kept a blog called The Mostyn-Thomas Journal. This was eventually turned into a Kindle book, My Daughter and I (2014) – which you can purchase on Amazon – and led to the 27-minute documentary listen, even when your heart is crying in the same year, also written and directed by myself.
I’ve created plays and drama scripts. I made my film directorial debut with the self-penned CODA (2011) and published a draft theatre script, How’s Your Garden? with Deafinitely Theatre in 2014. A third drama script – the experimental drama Here I Land (2020), commissioned by the British Sign Language Broadcasting Trust (BSLBT) – is in development.
In 2021 Deafinitely Theatre, in partnership with Paines Plough, commissioned me to write a short play, Keeping Hope. Based on my lockdown experiences, the 20-minute monologue forms part of their Talking Hands series and is performed in BSL by Nadia Nadarajah.
Today I still write for Disability Arts Online, and blog on Medium.
Selected writings
Blogs
My mother, myself, 3 Oct 2021
Writing: the gift that my ADHD gave me, 19 August 2021
2020: a pandemic year, 31st December 2020
An Open Letter to the Health Secretary of State, 22 June 2020
My name is Melissa and I am a single parent of two, 18 July 2017
A Deaf Identity Reclaimed, 28th March 2016
16 Days: Deaf survivors and domestic abuse, 7 December 2015
Reviews
Deaf and hard-of-hearing poetry that meets perfectly eye-to-eye, December 8, 2021
Scored in Silence, 21 July 2019
Derby Theatre raise the stakes in integrating sign language, 14 April 2019
Deafinitely Theatre’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 4 June 2014
Review: Chris Fonseca’s So Beautiful choreography, 18 March 2014
Review: Frozen by fingersmiths, 9 March 2014
‘A doubly emotionally-charged performance’, 18 December 2013
The End (preview), 16 June 2011
The Silence? A faint discord, more like, 19 July 2010
Double Sentence, 11 February 2009
But beautiful are the chances you take, February 2007
Running the course of tragi-comedy, 1 February 2007