Serpent and Stone, a poetry collaboration between Mari Ellis Dunning and Natalie Ann Holborow, gathers women from fairy tale, Greek myth, Shakespeare, biblical narrative, and the Mabinogion into a sequence of paired dramatic monologues. The poems function as duets, placing archetypes in conversation: Athena beside Medusa, Belle beside Mrs Potts, Cinderella beside her stepsister.. Visceral and sensual, alert to bodily detail and unafraid of the darkly comic, the collection refuses the flattened roles these figures have inherited, voicing rage, desire, weariness and complicity in the same breath. What emerges is a sustained interrogation of how women's stories have been told, and by whom.
 
PRAISE for Serpent and Stone:
Reimaginings have been done before but it’s the scope of curiosity that sets Serpent and Stone apart. Written as a collaborative project, alternative ways of seeing are built into the process. Unsettling as many original fairy tales are, this collection does not look away from the horror. As co-writers confident in their craft, Mari Ellis Dunning and Natalie Ann Holoborow, skilfully weave together the tales of Tinkerbell and Cordelia, offering up the point of view of Shakespeare’s Rosaline alongside the musings of an aging Dorothy Gale - it shouldn’t work but it does!
— Hanan Issa
 
A procession of women stepping forward from myth, literature and folktale to have their say in language as many-hued as a carnival and as brazen as a brass-band.
— Matthew Francis
 
With a cast stretching from Greek goddesses to the Great Gatsby, this delightful book garners characters from fairy tales (Rapunzel), novels (Bertha Mason) and a host of women from the Mabinogion along the way. Mari Ellis Dunning and Natalie Ann Holborow’s new work lands with such panache that it makes us want to stay in the company of these voices which so powerfully echo Carol Ann Duffy’s seminal work on this subject, The World’s Wife.
   — Samantha Wynn-Rydderch
 
ABOUT Mari Ellis Dunning & Natalie Ann Holborow:
Mari Ellis Dunning is author of two poetry collections and one poetry pamphlet; Salacia was shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2019, and Pearl and Bone was selected as Wales Arts Review’s Best of 2022. Her debut novel, Witsh, explores the witch trials of 16th century Wales.
 
Natalie Ann Holborow is author of three poetry collections; the collection Little Universe was shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2025. Her book, Wild Running is her first book of non-fiction. She is the winner of the 2025 Mslexia Short Story Prize and is currently working on a debut novel.