I was born in Hampshire, the third of four children. An otherwise ordinary childhood was punctuated by family stays in upstate New York; in 1973 we spent nine memorable months in Woodstock and Kingston, at the edge of the Catskills. I eyed the hippies, spoke fake ‘American’, and recited the Pledge of Allegiance each morning at school.
Back in Hampshire, I went to a comprehensive in Southampton and on to the University of York to study History, aka telling stories from unfamiliar viewpoints.
I then spent two years living and working in a community alongside people with learning disabilities near Dover. The experience had a lasting impact, but I wasn’t ready to commit so I took a place on a Manpower Services scheme to train as a secretary as my route in to publishing.
I was a lousy secretary, but I loved editing, and also ‘pasting up’ the old-fashioned way with a paper knife and a Pritt Stick. I became a commissioning editor for the Teach Yourself list at Hodder, but I left my job when I got married, had a baby, and became the ‘trailing spouse’ of a journalist. We lived first in Kyiv, then in Moscow and Islamabad.
Four children later, I returned to Hampshire and wrote extensively for young people – children’s nonfiction, mainly. This led to an MA, a job as a Creative Writing lecturer at the University of Winchester, and a doctorate. For six years I was also Director of the University’s now defunct Winchester Writers’ Festival.
Nowadays I run the MA Creative Writing programme at Winchester, mentor via Jericho Writers alongside my own writing, and walk every day, usually over St Catherine’s Hill and along a stretch of the South Downs Way.
My first novel for adults, Snegurochka, is set in Kyiv and was shortlisted for the 2020 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards. My second novel, Birdeye, is set in the Catskills. A third, not yet finished, is set in Winchester.
