I’m a writer, teacher and writing coach living in Leicestershire.

A former primary teacher, I work part-time for Loughborough University's Storytelling Academy, teach a creative writing night class for campus-based LU Arts and am the Emergent Artist programme coordinator for Charnwood Arts.

As a freelancer, I lead writing groups and workshops for adults and children in my local community and since April 2020 have delivered online writing workshops for the Royal Voluntary Service's Virtual Village Hall.

I've been Writer in Residence for a small independent museum, where I led a Writing East Midlands’/Arts Council project collecting 'stories of coming here' from town residents. I have an MA in Creative Writing and am accredited as a writing coach through the Arvon Foundation and the National Association of Writers in Education.

And sometimes amongst all of these things I write myself! Historical fiction and non-fiction, stories for children, educational materials for schools and online platforms and reams and reams of memoir - which I kid myself I'll pull into a book one day but find too daunting a prospect to actually action.

Helping others tell their stories is a bit of a passion. Finding the emotional courage to share my own more widely, however, is still a work in progress.

I wrote my first piece of published writing at fifteen (though it wasn’t published until I was twenty-three) – a memoir piece about my younger sister, who has Downs syndrome.

Since then I’ve written a piece for the Guardian Family supplement, non-fiction articles and chapters for local history books, on-line educational platforms and a teaching magazine, a ‘writing for children’ course for a digital platform and have self-published a number of history and children’s books. I support other writers to self-publish their work and regularly publish anthologies of work written by the participants of my writing groups.

Increasingly, my creative output is shared online. I run the Loughborough History and Heritage Network website, posting articles by myself and others several times a week, have written short scripts for films and recently co-produced a performance of Christmas memories collected from people living in a care home.

My children’s book - ‘Songster – Loughborough’s Own War Horse’ was published by the Carillon Tower and War Memorial Museum in 2018.