A NOVEL written by a Worcester University graduate has hit bookshelves.
Best Before: The Short Shelf Life, is the first novel published by Trudi Holland, who writes under the pen name DD Holland.
It is a social comedy exploring life inside a care home and is now available from bookshops.
She said: “I’m excited. It’s a completely different feeling to finishing the book. When it’s shown to others that’s when it gets real, it’s not just on a laptop.”
The novel follows London hotel chef Szechwan Le Duc, whose career takes an unexpected turn when he finds himself working in a care home. Developed over four years, the story originated from short pieces Trudi wrote during her degree in creative writing at Worcester.
Trudi continued: “I think community was a big theme that I was interested in and women working in care. An unspoken sector of women that put in all this work and don’t get the credit for it. There’s a lot of talk about care settings as being negative places. I wanted to investigate them as places of community rather than places we don’t want to be put in.”
She added: “Your writing moves so quickly. The books are relics of who you were, that snapshot in time, so I look upon my previous work with a nostalgia of looking at yourself. It’s really nice to have that moment of you that’s really distilled.”
The 26-year-old is working towards a PhD in creative writing at Worcester, alongside a role as an associate lecturer in creative writing and English literature.
Trudi, who says she has always loved storytelling, wrote her first novel at just 16 and has completed two more since. Best Before is the first she has taken forward to publication.
After winning Worcester University’s Black Pear Press Prize for fiction in 2022, which led to the publication of her short story collection The Lady Doth Protest, Trudi submitted Best Before to the same publisher who accepted it. She even designed the front cover herself.
