ideas taking shape. following curiosities.

non-fiction . representations of creativity beyond motherhood .

I'm researching the ways women have imagined creativity outside the familiar story of motherhood — from mythology and art to contemporary experience.

this will become a companion piece to my doctoral thesis imaging motherhood in art.

fiction - forthcoming novels

I’m currently working on three novels. One is close to being published under the name Mollie Furst. Insert Self Here is nearly finished and ready for an editor and the other The Fellowship of the Hill is at the research stage.

The Eccentrics Book one

The Unbearable Likeness of Being

Oxford art historian Thalia Wainscott is pulled into a bizarre case when a mediocre Ashmolean portrait vanishes and a French student who looks exactly like its subject disappears.

With a handsome detective, eccentric friends, and academia’s absurdities closing in, Thalia must decode art, obsession, and misdirection before a lovesick thief turns aesthetic rapture into murder.

Barbara Whitfield and Paul Tosio writing as Mollie Furst - to be published winter 2026

Insert Self Here

When Clemmie set out, she didn’t expect that her walk would take 394 days, 6 hours and 52 seconds. If she had, she’d have packed better. She’d certainly have brought a change of clothes. And a waterproof.

Grieving the death of her closest friend, older, quieter griefs surface. So, Clemmie walks — round and round the same mountain expecting that eventually she’ll be ready to return home.

Written at walking pace, Insert Self Here pays attention to the small joys, mysteries and sorrows along the way: people encountered, nature and weather passed through, things that at a faster pace might go unnoticed.