Illustrator

Hey, I am Ella Frances Sanderson.

I am a poet with High Functioning Asperger’s. I have written a set of poems about my Asperger’s titled A Window into Asperger’s and I continue to write about this topic .

I love to be an advocate for autism via my poetry and paid advocacy work .

Performing experience

When I was a teenager in Ilkley Young Writers I peformed my poetry in many locations such as Chapel FM Radio and The Bronte Parsonage. I worked on the Stanza Stones project in conjunction with Simon Armitage and Ilkley Young Writers and even ended up performing poetry on Ikley Moor and in the Kings Hall, Ilkley.

Since leaving Ilkley Young writers I have done lots of performances.

I have done several open mics and been paid to perform in Saltburn at an event called DiVerse. I was picked to perform in Newcastle as part of a BBC competition to find new voices in the North.

I did my own event at the Ilkley fringe festival where I performed my poems on my Asperger's, showed a video about Asperger's and then Alex Asher performed some poetry about social difficulties and being transgender and have perfomed at my own show at the Leeds Museum at an event about disability .

Courses and poets I have worked with.

I have done many workshops with poets such as Dajit Nagra, Malika Booker, Sai Murray, and continue to do them whenever the opportunity arises .

I did a week's writers' course with Arvon.

I have worked with the wonderful poets Becky Cherriman and Michele Scally Clarke when I was in Ilkley Young Writers for about 4 years and the lovely poet Maria Stephenson, when I did her 'Write a Collection in a Year' course.

Some of my Achievements

An audio piece I co -created was on BBC 6 Music.

I won the first stage of a BBC competition and I was one of 15 in the North East to be able to go to two workshops and then do a performance with Malika Booker.

I won 1st prize in the Wharfedale Festival poetry Competition.

I have had a selection of poems published. First in a book of poems about the Moor in connection with the Stanza Stones Project with Simon Armitage. Secondly in a book about the Bronte Family for the Bronte Parsonage Museum.

I also won a competition to be published in a book about the NHS and I was also published in a book called the Night School Poets after I had been on a night school poetry course with Maria Stephenson and I am published in a book about being single and 40 (though my poems in there are about being friends with any age and why is it so wrong to be single at 40!) and, finally various anthologies about the Corona Virus pandemic-during this time two poems were published online too I have been published in other anthologies too.

Click here to read an article published by the National Austistic society :

Photo Kev Howard

Photo taken by Dawn Kilner Blur the Lines