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Reveals a funny, sensitive and brave woman * Grazia *Д®min talks with brutal frankness. intriguing, almost incantatory * Saturday Telegraph *

effortlessly funny * Metro *ДЄs spare and poignant as one of Emin's line drawings * Marie Claire *ДЄ very readable book, and a surprising one too * Independent on Sunday *ДЇrequently affecting. * Observer *ДЄ fantastically engaging storyteller. While her best-known art has shown Emin at her most confrontational, in her writing we meet a calmer, more sensitive soul. Strangeland is more than Tracey's diary, just as her bed and her tent and her blankets are more than private displays that happen to have attracted a lot of attention - Jeanette Winterson * The Times * Instead, I stocked fridges and wiped tables until my arms ached as Deborah went to art openings, leaving me to empty the bins.Her writings are painfully honest. I wanted to ask how she learnt to push the darkness out of her to name it and give it form. I dug my nails into my palms to stop myself from grabbing her and telling her I understood how it felt to come from nowhere and to want everything to feel trapped by the weight of your body as it dragged you through the world.

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I couldnвЂ™t believe that I was showing her how to do something: Tracey Emin, who had taught me so much. вЂWill you show me how to pour one?вЂ™ I guided her with shaking hands, showing her how to draw a shamrock on top. вЂDeborah said I could have a Guinness,вЂ™ she said. She slipped behind the bar, shy and softly spoken. One afternoon, DeborahвЂ™s best friend Tracey came into the pub.

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She was known for looking after young artists in the Nineties вЂ“ when Shoreditch was full of industrial spaces that could be used as art studios, before the rental market exploded and Nike and Costa moved in. The landladyвЂ™s name was Deborah, and we became close. вЂYou start on Friday, alright, babe?вЂ™ she called down to me.

Before I had chance to reply, David Bowie burst from the jukebox and she climbed up onto the bar and started hula-hooping, waving a framed picture of the Pope. вЂDo you want to work in my pub?вЂ™ she asked. Nowhere was hiring and I was about to give up when a landlady in a glittery cardigan and a slash of coral lipstick looked me up and down. I traipsed around Brick Lane with a wad of CVs. Tracey pulled her shame from her mouth like a thread of light and hung it on the gallery walls for everyone to see.Дuring my first year at university, I needed a job because I didnвЂ™t have any money.

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I didnвЂ™t know that it was possible to tell the story of your own life like that to take the hurt and the dreams caught beneath your skin and make them visible. It was the first time IвЂ™d seen art that felt as though it was speaking directly to me. I was at uni studying English literature and often found the academic language used to discuss art and writing alienating, but my connection with TraceyвЂ™s work was immediate and visceral I felt it in my blood.

I listened to her talking about her abortion on film and I watched a video of her naming the men who sexually assaulted her when she was a teen in Margate, spinning in circles to a Sylvester song in her silky red shirt. As I walked around her exhibition вЂ“ reading the words, вЂA terrible wantingвЂ™ and вЂMy brains all split upвЂ™ on her appliquГ©d blankets, staring at her searing neons and studying her trembling, painful monoprints of the female form вЂ“ a hot, dense redness swelled inside of me. That was the kind of woman I wanted to be. I read that she was wild and subversive, that she did what she wanted and caused a stir. The only thing I really knew about Tracey was her famous unmade bed. I was full of chaos, and I marvelled at the way artists could unspool their own feelings and make them into something, giving their experiences form and colour that other people could touch. In London, I spent weekends wandering around cavernous white spaces, wonderstruck by the splattered canvasses, towering sculptures and flashing lights. IвЂ™d moved from Sunderland, where there was one small gallery. IвЂ™d only been living in the city for a year and I didnвЂ™t know who I was there yet. When I was 19, I went to see Love is What You Want, a mid-career retrospective of Tracey EminвЂ™s work at the Hayward Gallery in London.

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