Emma Garland is a culture writer and editor based in London. Originally from Wales, Emma spent more than seven years working at VICE as an editor, and nowadays, she’s freelance with bylines in a variety of places. Jay Kay from Jamiroquai once called her about a piece she wrote about the band’s comeback show. (You’ll have to read this interview for the whole story… but despite being described as “Prince in a fleece,” he totally loved it.).
How did you get to where you are today, professionally?
One of the first memories I have of ‘being on the computer’ is writing a novel in my pre-teens that was basically Jim Henson’s Labyrinth with the characters’ names switched out. At the same time, my entire family was music obsessed. My dad’s a musician, my mam and aunt were total fangirls for bands like Fleetwood Mac and Pink Floyd, and my older cousin—the closest I have to a sibling—raised me on a diet of 90s punk, nu metal and skate culture before I was old enough to know what a “chocolate starfish” even was. Clearly music and impulse to write were both in me already, but journalism wasn’t something I worked towards professionally. I fell into it through lifestyle.
I started writing about music in university. I must have been around 18/19. I was studying Creative Writing and English Literature and one of the modules had to do with publishing. They probably meant ‘submit your prose or poetry to a relevant journal or magazine’, but I ended up pitching to music publications instead. I’m not sure whether it was lack of confidence in my own creative writing, a lack of interest in it, or I just wanted the free records and gig tickets that came in exchange for reviewing stuff, but from there I ended up writing regularly for various DIY magazines and blogs. I did that for a long time alongside a rotation of shitty day jobs—retail, bar work, a library in a conservatoire (this one was actually a dream job, I will miss it forever). It wasn’t until I joined VICE’s music vertical Noisey, when I was in my mid-20s, that I started writing for a living. The rest is, regrettably, public domain.