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I am a poet, writer and editor, living in Maryport on the West Cumbrian coast.

I was born in London, studied English Literature at Oxford University and worked as an editor for Penguin, Longman and BBC Books in the 1980s. With my husband, Ian Francis, I ran Ellenbank Press from 1989 to the mid-1990s. Our award-winning publications included Coleridge Walks the Fells: A Lakeland Journey Retraced by Alan Hankinson and This Green Earth: A Celebration of Nature Poetry edited by William Scammell.

I have been a freelance editor since 1990, working for many different publishers, including Bloomsbury, Hachette, HarperCollins, Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press. I have edited educational books for White-Thomson Publishing Services, medical books for M&K Update and a variety of books for self-publishing authors, specialising in memoirs.

I have also written several children’s books and I am co-author (with Claire Lewis) of 35 Up: The Book of the Granada TV Series.

My poems have been widely anthologised and published in several magazines, including Mslexia, Magma, The Journal, Southlight and Shooter Literary Magazine. I won the Magma Subscribers’ Competition in 2018 and I have been shortlisted in a number of competitions, most recently the erbacce-press poetry prize 2021 and the international Aesthetica Creative Writing Award for Poetry. In 2021, I also came second in the Borderlines Poetry Competition.

Please click on Poetry to see a selection of older and more recent publications and some sample poems.

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Click on The Lost Art of Ironing to read about my new collection, published by Hedgehog Poetry Press, and order copies direct from my website.  

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