Many suffer from the incurable disease of writing, and it becomes chronic in their sick minds. (Juvenal)

 Words are my passion: for the knowledge they communicate, for the story they can spin, for the intrinsic beauty of sound, rhythm and meaning the right words in the right order can convey. 

During my childhood in the north of Scotland, stories were central to my existence. I haunted the local library. I read to escape frequent illness. I made up stories and won prizes with them. I was the dreamy child whose head was always in a book, much to the tongue-clicking disgust of my peers and relatives, who preferred to inhabit the real world rather than the world of the imagination. My mother would send me on errands and I'd drift back some minutes later to ask again what it was she had sent me to get - I must have driven her mad!

I studied English Literature at Aberdeen University and later Merton College here in Oxford, where I have made my home with my husband and our two sons and where, for many years, I've taught A level English Literature at Cherwell College.

The desire to tell a tale never left me and I gained success, winning an Ian St James Award for my story 'Exposed' and having my novel, The Chase, published by Bloomsbury. The experience of being published led me towards my now decade-long involvement with creative writing teaching. I teach every June at the Writers' Conference at the University of Winchester. In Oxford, I teach on the University's Summer School programme and have given day courses on the Undergraduate Diploma in Creative Writing programme. For three years I conducted a twenty week part-time course in novel writing,  for the University's Department of Continuing Education.

As a writing tutor my priorities have always been to convey enthusiasm and information. I want my students to enjoy the thrill of discovering what they can do, but also to have a realistic sense of how tough the world of publishing is these days and how they can develop strategies to improve their work and maximise their chances if publication is their goal.

I haven't entirely left behind the child I was: you still can't hold a conversation with me if I'm lost in a book and the idea of being anywhere, anywhere, without reading-matter to hand, throws me into a blind panic. But I'm also someone who's experienced the struggle to get published, the constant battle to maintain self-belief, someone who's learned an enormous amount along the way about how to keep developing as a writer and how to deal with the vagaries of the publishing industry. I want to share the lessons I've learned, the skills and the strategies for survival that I've acquired - along with that still-unspoilt love and enthusiasm for the written word and what it can convey to us.

I continue to live with characters, plot developments and created worlds all barging about inside my head, clamouring to get out. My response to what I see, hear, read or research is, so often, 'That would make a good story!' It's an obsession, a sickness, a delight, a tyranny: it's the writing life!

Latest news: I'm delighted to have been shortlisted for the 2009 Bridport Short Story Prize, which was judged by Ali Smith.