Jane Acton, with her manuscript-in-progress, Toxic, is a 2024 New Voices writer. Congratulations, Jane.

Giulia has decided she will not let any more women die.

At an apothecary in Renaissance Italy, women come to Giulia looking for treatment for sore throats, pimples or a toothache. They tell her their stories and, sometimes, when it is the only way, she gives them a special cure, to relieve pain, to make things better. She is remembered as having poisoned six hundred men, but for every man she poisoned, a woman lived. This is a legend from a time when nothing stopped men from murdering women and a story that asks why, six hundred years after Giulia lived and died, there is nothing stopping men from murdering women. Toxic is a dark fantasy about what might happen if we stopped accepting that there is nothing we can do. 

About Jane: Jane turned fifty this year. She came to writing after going along to an evening class and discovering she could write comedy. By day she is a lawyer for a children’s charity. When she is not doing that, she writes comedy and occasionally performs with her writers group. Lockdown gave Jane time and space to start writing the (much) more serious stories she wanted to tell and she hasn’t been able to stop. Jane is studying for her MLitt in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow.