PRiSM Writer in Residence Abi Bliss
PRiSM 2021 Writer in Residence Abi Bliss
I am a writer and editor specialising in music journalism. Growing up in Dorset on a diet of rural isolation, music papers and speculative fiction, I studied Cultural Criticism & English Literature at Cardiff University before moving to West Yorkshire in 2000. With a particular interest in experimental, electronic and contemporary music – including drone, psychedelia, improvisation and sound art – my writing has been published by The Wire, hcmf//, BBC Online, the Guardian, Metro, Sound And Music and many others.
I am also a founding member and co-director of Yorkshire Sound Women Network, a non-profit organisation set up to increase women and gender minorities’ participation in the audio field. As well as working behind the scenes and running the website I am currently producing a new music technology-themed YSWN podcast.
I live just outside Huddersfield, where I sporadically make audiovisual work ranging across installation, performance and radio art and (in non-Covid times) run a monthly improvisation night. More recently I have been trying to convince my preschool daughter that what she calls ‘noisy music’ isn’t all bad.
As a journalist, I love meeting people who are immersed in a subject and learning from them in order to communicate their passion through my writing. I’m delighted to have the opportunity to do this at PRiSM in far greater depth than my usual wordcounts and deadlines would allow. I also hope to use the residency to extend my writing skills beyond printed formats and let the sonic innovation I encounter influence the work I create.
