Al Jennings · Writer & Columnist · West Yorkshire

Life’s a bit
of a farce.
I’m writing
about it.

I’m Al Jennings. I write about people, culture, relationships, spectacular misjudgements and the peculiar business of becoming someone you might actually like. Sometimes it’s Shakespeare. Sometimes it’s Eurovision. Occasionally it’s men behaving in ways that suggest evolution may have been a little premature.

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THE WRITING IS VARIED. THE OVERTHINKING IS CONSISTENT.

The work

Selected writing

Four pieces from The Unfinished Man, the contemporary home of my writing. The essays are over there; this is the shop window.

Explore the full portfolio and archive ↗

Previously published: TheGayUK (columns and reviews, 2020) · Tackle Magazine (print, 2021)
The personal publication

The Unfinished
Man.

There’s a certain age when you begin to suspect the confident, effortlessly sorted adult you were supposed to become has missed their connecting train. The Unfinished Man is where I write about that: queer life, bodies, masculinity, desire, belonging and the maddening gap between knowing better and actually doing better. No grand transformation. No inspirational montage. Just the work in progress.

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The person behind the paragraphs

Hello.
I’m Al.

West Yorkshire born. Musically trained. Professionally employable. Personally still a work in progress.

At 25, I was rarely in one place for very long. There were nights out, suitcases that never quite got unpacked and a heroic commitment to making tomorrow’s problem somebody else’s concern. Usually tomorrow’s me.

I’d left the north to train in musical theatre, spent years working overseas and eventually found my way into recruitment. A sensible career, on paper. The rest of my life has been rather less interested in paperwork.

Getting older, losing my mum and discovering that the things you want can change completely have all altered how I look at the world. I’m back in West Yorkshire, approaching 35 and making some fairly substantial decisions about what comes next.

I write because people fascinate me, contradictions irritate me and life keeps providing material without the decency to ask first. Some stories are funny. Some aren’t. Quite a few manage to be both.

Nobody mentioned the second act would involve this much admin.

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For editors and collaborators

Something
worth saying?

I write personal essays, opinion columns, cultural commentary, humour and first-person features. Shakespeare one week, the BBC’s Eurovision choices the next. I bring a northern perspective, a fairly extensive collection of life experience and the ability to meet a deadline without turning it into a personality trait.

Get in touch ↗

theunfinishedmanuk@gmail.com