Dawn O'Porter on loss shaping her love of food

Guernsey-raised writer Dawn O'Porter says her "kind of extraordinary" relationship with food became a source of comfort after the death of her mother when she was a child, as she releases a new memoir.

Her book, Hungry Eyes: A Memoir of Appetite, Ambition and the Odd Bag of Wotsits for Dinner, looks at how food has shaped her life, from childhood grief to adulthood.

O'Porter said she has had an emotional relationship with food which was shaped by how she dealt with the death when she was six years old.

She said: "When food was around, everyone was sort of OK and it provided this huge distraction from what was going on, and I think I just locked onto it as a bit of an emotional support system."

Speaking to BBC Guernsey, she continued: "I'm very emotional about food. I love food, I think my relationship with food since I was a kid has been kind of extraordinary in the way that I lost my mum when I was six and it was a really sad time.

"If I'm sad, happy, want to celebrate someone, celebrate myself, if I'm travelling, anything I do, food is the first thing I think of and making sure that it is part of the experience that I'm having."

O'Porter said it "was lovely" writing about how she dealt with her mother's death in the book as she felt she hid her true feelings about it while growing up.

She said: "I know how I came across at school. I was very confident but I'm a very typical artist, generally hiding my feelings when I was younger until I worked out how to articulate them later on in life through my work.

"I was going through an awful lot and I think back to young Dawn at the time, and just think: 'God, what a chaotic mess.'

"I was so determined to be the funny one, the loud one, the confident one. People would have forgotten that I'd gone through this unbelievable tragedy and trauma because I never bought it up, didn't mention it again.

"I just let my kind of loud confidence hide it for fear of someone mentioning it".

Follow BBC Guernsey on X and Facebook and Instagram. Send your story ideas to channel.islands@bbc.co.uk.