Homesickness, screenwriting, and Arts funding
With Garrett Carr, Mario Theodorou, and Dane Kuttler
Aged 17, I stood at a crossroads that could have led to a very different life. I’d just received the first failed grade I had ever had, an E in an A Level Chemistry test, and the tears came heavy. The stress of taking two sciences — a decision I reluctantly accepted after both teachers and my family insisted I needed a ‘safe’ back-up if I was determined to take English — had me grinding my teeth so severely that I had hospital consultations for the jaw pain.
I took the road towards the creative side of myself, dropping Chemistry and disappointing my family’s dreams of having a doctor in their ranks. It led me to a degree in the subject I loved, and to the career I’m building now; if the pressure of expectation and the push towards STEM had swung me the other way, I think I’d always resent relenting.
The feeling we’re pushed to share is that the arts don’t matter, that health-tech helping billionaires live longer or defence companies building drones to kill children are what does because it makes rich people money and maybe one day we’ll see some of it. But as awards season comes around, art is all we can talk about. We chat about five minute speeches, the films that should have made it, what more poor Timothée Chalamet, who apparently spent five years studying Bob Dylan in preparation for A Complete Unknown, has to do to get that coveted Best Actor trophy. It brings us some light, a platform to expose the dark, and a way to connect.
And yet, a dearth of support persists. Last month, leading drama schools across England warned of a financial crisis that could close doors to underrepresented groups after Bristol Old Vic theatre school announced it would be closing all undergraduate courses from September. The Observer reported last year that while Germany, France and Finland have each increased their culture spending by up to 70%, Britain has cut back its total culture budget by 6% since 2010. And it may have been five years ago now, but Rishi Sunak may never live down his ill-advised and poorly received ‘Fatima’s next job could be in cyber’ campaign.
But perhaps there is change on the horizon: Labour recently announced a £270m funding packet to boost arts, culture, libraries and heritage work across the country. Part of it is set to go to schools, as well as museums, galleries and other programmes promoting the arts as an option for more people to pursue. I hope it changes the attitudes from the people entrusted with guidance — and maybe it’ll save someone else from some undue stress-induced jaw pain.
Sadia Nowshin
Junior Editor
On Muckross Head
Garrett Carr remembers the coast around his hometown in the north west of Ireland
I spent a lot of my youth adrift; living and working across many parts of the world, but I didn’t experience homesickness until I was about 29. It took me a while to diagnose myself as the homesickness was manifested abstractly and came and went in quick flashes. I wouldn’t have expected homesickness to feel like a seizure, although an emotional one, but that’s how it was. I’d stop whatever I was doing and close my eyes and find myself back in Donegal. But I’d not see family or old friends, I’d see a place called Muckross Head. I might even feel sea spray in my hair.
Muckross Head is a 10 minute drive from the fishing town where I grew up. It is a headland just a few fields wide and a couple of miles long and ending in a dramatic arrangement of black stone; horizontally layered slabs that form a wave-cut platform at sea level and, overhead, jut into the Atlantic wind. The slabs look like the remains of some vast interlocking puzzle, the other half borne away as continents parted. Standing there you sense deep time and you even think you can grasp it.
Garrett Carr’s The Boy from the Sea was published by Picador in February 2025. He is currently reading Washington Square by Henry James
From screen to page
Mario Theodorou on the freedom of writing novels after a career of screenwriting
For years, I built my career as a screenwriter, crafting stories that had to be lean, structured, and ruthlessly efficient. Every word had to pull its weight. No indulgence or waffling, just pure, distilled storytelling. The economy of language was everything.
Then I transitioned to fiction, and it felt like unbuckling a very tight seatbelt. Suddenly, I had space, room to stretch, to let words breathe, to dive deep into my characters’ minds in ways that scripts never allowed. No more hiding emotions behind lingering glances or carefully placed silences. I could spill their thoughts straight onto the page, raw and unfiltered.
But while novels offer freedom, they demand a different kind of discipline, one that completely reshaped the way I tell stories.
Now, with Oscar season in full swing and adaptations dominating the big screen, the conversation between fiction and film feels more relevant than ever. Storytelling is fluid, but shifting between mediums isn’t as seamless as it seems.
So, what are the key differences? Here’s my take on writing for both, where they diverge, where they overlap, and how learning to navigate both has changed the way I write.
Mario’s debut novel, Felix Grey and the Descendant, will be published by Unbound tomorrow and is currently available to preorder. Want to read a snippet first? Here’s an extract, exclusively on Boundless
Mario also joined Patrick Galbraith on the latest episode of the Boundless podcast to chat screenwriting, writing stories when young, and guiding his own children now. Listen on Spotify / Apple Podcasts
Poetry from Dane Kuttler
mud season
When the light comes back,
I come with it -
a disheveled mess of rocks and soil,
snowmelt tracks
and dust,
anticipate the roughening
of my heels,
the plumping and peeling
of skin too long cooped up
by the heater, so unaccustomed
to the gentle sear of a spring high noon.
The phantom crunch
in the space between my teeth
a full month before
we tear the first lettuce heads
from between our feet.
We stick our thumbs
in a pile of shamrocks and ask
that they be blessed.
In this moment,
there is still a chance
for everything
to go right.
Dane Kuttler cooks up a storm and writes up a wall in rural Massachusetts, USA. More available at www.danepoetry.com