About Magz Morgan
I write feminist historical fiction, memoir, and short stories that begin with something that appears ordinary, and gradually opens into something less expected.
My work is often shaped by small details — an image, a sound, a remembered sensation
— that lead into deeper histories, inner lives, and the shifting perspectives between people. As a story unfolds, what first seemed certain is often clarified, complicated, or quietly undone.
I’m interested in how meaning changes through relationship: how the same moment can be experienced differently, how assumptions shift when we listen more closely, and how narratives we take for granted are shaped by power, context, and memory.
I write with care for both subject and reader. My work is researched, tested, and reflective — including of my own limitations — and I try to leave space for readers to arrive at their own insights without being led or patronised.
Writing, for me, is a way of thinking and of seeing. It has helped me find language for experiences that once felt unnamed, and to trust intuition as a guide into deeper understanding.
I imagine my primary readers to be women — particularly those navigating pressure to conform — and I hope my work offers a sense of permission: to see differently, to choose for oneself, and to live with integrity in the face of inherited rules and expectations.
Dear Kitty: The Legacy of the Fatherland
A work of feminist memoir and historical reflection.
Magz is currently completing a book that traces the origins of her ethical and political awakening, beginning with a formative encounter at the age of fourteen with The Diary of Anne Frank.
Reading Anne Frank’s diary in German while living on a military base in Germany, she experienced the book not primarily as a historical account of war, but as the intimate
voice of a young girl negotiating her relationship with her mother, her need for space and recognition, and her growing awareness of the world closing in around her. That reading opened a fault line between what she was being taught and what she was beginning to perceive.
The book follows how this early insight unsettled inherited narratives — about power, gender, nationalism, and obedience — and how anger, confusion, and moral questioning took shape long before there was language to name them. It explores the experience of growing up inside male-dominated, militarised systems, and the dissonance of seeing history from both sides at once.
From this starting point, the work moves through later chapters of life: migration, motherhood, the galvanising force of environmental and anti-nuclear activism, and the discovery of communities and thinkers who had long been grappling with the same ethical questions. At its core, the book examines how values — often unspoken — shape personal lives, political systems, and historical outcomes.
“I don’t think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.” — Anne Frank
Where the book is now
The manuscript is currently in its final edit, following a long period of writing, reflection, and careful shaping.
Emotionally, the work sits in a place of complexity rather than resolution. It brings together admiration and difficulty, resilience and harm, and resists simple or binary readings. The book asks readers to stay with nuance — to recognise how people are shaped by history, trauma, power, and the limits of language available to them at the time.
I’m aware that parts of the book may be challenging, particularly for those close to the stories it contains. It isn’t a work that can be taken in fragments or judged quickly; it asks for patience and attentiveness.
At the same time, the book feels timely. Many of the forces it examines — silence, fear, inherited narratives, and the pressure to conform — continue to shape public and private life. The work doesn’t offer easy answers, but it does offer language, perspective, and the possibility of seeing differently.
You can follow Magz’s ongoing writing and reflections on Substack.
Read or Listen on Substack →