I write. That's about as concise as I've ever been in self-description as I cherish words and the connections I garner in ascribing them to my imagination. Because of this, I write in many different forms. Novels, poetry, criticism, screenplays, short stories, creative nonfiction, and have my own column titled 'Violent Expression'. I believe in words and the worlds they allow me to escape to. For the starter, here is my Author Bio:
Aaron Farrell is a working-class Don Quixote - perpetually wrestling his neurodiverse demons with a hero complex attained through literary icons. From growing up in a Google labelled ‘rough area’, Aaron has gone on to explore our pale blue dot. He utilises the heterogeneous peoples, places and cultures experienced to offer a witty, weird and wonder-filled worldview. Now living in Barcelona with a Creative & Professional Writing First Class degree from Bangor University, he's also Co-Founder/Editor of Cape Magazine, Gonzo essayist for V13, Black Belt Third-Dan Kung-Fu Instructor, English Teacher, and a very mediocre skater. His first novel, The Lost and Found - loosely based upon his global escapades - and his inaugural poetry collection, ArtBeat: The Ekphrastic Spastic – a culture vulture's bildungsroman – are both available on Amazon. (Hi, it’s me, Aaron – we’re supposed to write bios in third person, but fourth walls are meant to be broken – and I’m still waiting for publishers worldwide to recognize my worth so I can get the fuck out of Jeff Bezos's grotesque pocket).

For the Main: I write like no one else I know. I am a working-class Welshboy that has laboured doggedly to escape the spiritual, financial, and perceptive constrictions that were stolid 'rites' of my tiny world. I didn't grow up with a bookshelf in my house but I had an (EU funded!) library close by. A quick-cut leap back to the future (references are my rose) and one of the hopes for my Travel Thriller/ Working-Class novel, The Lost and Found, is to have fellow humble nomads discover it on a bookshelf in some nowhere-hostel, and to have their spirits emboldened. Not only in their representation within the diverse and soulful characters featured in the TLAF, but that one of us did it. One of us got on a bookshelf. No matter what the world throws (or doesn’t throw) our way, I was able to negate our disenfranchisement at the lack of franchises representing us and offer an insight to readers in a way Orwell did in Wigan Pier. Though this writer earnestly and authentically understood the plights of a people overworked, underpaid and much maligned in the eyes of the media.

For the desert: A truism that could be filtered into an Aaron Farrell Artist Statement is this: No one thing defines me. Lots of people have difficulty comprehending that. If you’re a writer, how can you also be a fighter? If you travel the world, how can you be working-class? If you come from the joy-riding capital of Europe, how come you aren’t in jail? Choice. We all have it – albeit us working-class people have a lot less options for choice as a standard – and we’re all capable of it. I chose to deny expectations. I chose to work and save not for a house five doors down from my Mammy, but to simply travel freely for as long as I could afford. I chose not to partake in the crimes or the punishments. Simply, I chose to pursue ALL of my passions and predilections with the pragmatism passed down to me by the matriarchal Farrell’s. Whilst it’s been obscenely tough at times, I wouldn’t change the journey. Now, nearing thirty, I’m living in my most adored city, Barcelona, I self-published my novel and poetry collection, I have a beautiful dog called, Sancho Panza, and I’m finally able to say what others have been saying for years. I am a great writer, a Tarantino-cool motherfucker, and an empathic and endearing human being to boot. My twenties were so hard because I couldn’t accept all of the changes and lifestyles misaligning with my background. Buta diagnosis of ADHD and Autism at twenty-eight explained so much to me, Mammy and other loved ones, as to why I’ve always been so unique, so weird, so brilliantly imaginative. There’s a reason I cherish artists like Dali, Angelou, Ginsberg, Dick, Vonnegut, Atwood, Basquiat, Pynchon, Butler, the 27 Club members, etcetera. I am them. I am someone who simply perceives this world differently than the rest and I have an artform to showcase that. Whilst some in the mainstream (or Academia, I learned) detest my style, flair and nonconformity, I have had others from backgrounds similar to mine who have gotten in touch after reading an article about mental health, or a poem about generational dissonance, and thanked me. I write to communicate, and no matter how few people have bought my books or have read my works, I am refracting the timelessness of words with the timeliness of my motley experience as a financially poor millennial in a morally-bankrupt millennium.

And for the after-dinner Aperitif and Mint (shout out to anyone who only has After Eights on a stomach full of turkey, gravy and potatoes): I can write about a lot because I’ve lived a lot. I learned all the rules so I could contort them. I admire the pen because I am the sword. I admire the sword because I am the pen. All I need now is for everyone to catch up on my being a morally aware Bukowski; a Plath who overcame the depression (with help from a less apathetic society toward mental health); the Thompson without the (hard) drug addictions but with a lifetime of societal afflictions and enough heart for a world of corrupt Nixons. With the help, guidance and/or nurture of the Working Class Creatives Database, I wholeheartedly believe I can find the lost audience I’ve never had the chance to meet as this dextrous and yet deprived writer.