Stage Mum

When I took my six-year-old daughter along to an open audition, it was just a fun way to occupy some time in the Easter holidays. But, despite having no previous stage experience, a few months later she was on stage at the London Palladium in The Sound of Music.

How do you stop fame going to your child's head? How do you quell your pride and avoid turning into a nightmare Stage Mother? And how much chocolate can you eat at rehearsals?

This is a book for every parent who has wondered whether to put, encourage or push their children on to stage, television or celluloid; for every grown-up child who wanted to audition and wasn't allowed to, and for anyone interested in the consequences when showbiz happens to ordinary people.

"honest, well-observed and very funny"
Time Out

"One woman's hilarious account of putting her daughter on the West End Stage"
The Daily Mail

Work includes

Copywriting (print and online), filmed, recorded and/or edited video and audio content for digital distribution, project management of print and online projects, as well as event organisation and press relations

Previous clients/employers include

BBC
BookTrust
Brighton Jobcentre
British Council for School Environments
De Montfort University, Leicester
Flix Films
Hanover Housing Assocation
Icon Books
Just Different
London Real
The National End of Life Care Programme
The Orange Prize for Fiction (now the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction)
Professor Sue Thomas
The Reading Agency
Seeboard plc
Serpent's Tail
Surestart Roundwood
Teach First
TrAce Online Writing Project
University of North London (Now London Metropolitan University)
The Women’s Library
The Women's Press

Essays

I've contributed essays to a variety of publications including, most recently, ones on Zadie Smith's White Teeth to London Fictions, edited by Jerry White and Andrew Whitehead, on Sensibility to William Hayley (1745-1820), Poet, Biographer and Libertarian: A Reassessment edited by Paul Foster and Diana Barsham and on the relationship between William Hayley and William Cowper to the Cowper and Newton Journal.

Radio

A meditation on the nature of sound and hearing made for BBC Radio 3's Between the Ears, Disequilibrium traces sound designer & composer Nick Ryan's experience of developing a balance disorder that morphs his world into a space nearly as alien as the 3D audio computer game he's creating.

The programme was my idea, I directed it, did most of the interviews and structuring. Nick made it sound amazing and provided most of the material, while Jeremy Mortimer produced.

"easily one of the most powerful programmes of the year.”

Chris Maume, The Independent on Sunday

Articles and reviews

I've written features for most national newspapers and have reviewed books (still do occasionally) mostly for The Independent and The Independent on Sunday.

Websites

As you can see, I'm not a designer, but aside from building my own website and, back in 2008 for if:book UK www.rolledythewind.net, I ran the Orange Prize for Fiction (now the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction) website for 12 years (1999-2010), project managed the penultimate website for the National End of Life Care Programme and have also provided digital consultancy or website management services to at least six of the clients /employers on the list above left.

Friends
Why Men and Women Are From the Same Planet

Why is there only one acceptable ending to the boy meets girl story? Is it really so difficult for men and women to be friends without sex getting in the way?

These are the questions at the heart of Friends, which takes a candid look at platonic relationships between the sexes. Have we sexualised a type of friendship that was, at one time, very common and non-threatening? And who has the upper hand in a mixed-sex friendship? Can there be any equality? This book features extensive interviews and historical research in its investigation of this timeless issue, showing how friendships across the gender divide are more widespread and necessary than ever before and proving that men and women do come from the same planet.

"So level-headed, so sensible, that it's downright shocking"
Boyd Tonkin, The Independent

Things I've studied or learned by experience

Sound engineering, interviewing, not to give a baby apple juice in a bottle, writing and editing, using Final Cut Pro X, International Relations, not to marry someone just because they once made me laugh really hard, Literature and Politics 1776-1832, training, website editing, structuring, management and commissioning, not to swing my legs while riding pillion on a motorbike, reading and listening; PR, lecturing and public speaking, training, arts admin, project management, front crawl.

And…

Stuff from way back to fill that left over white space. Will change these from time to time…

Bricks Without Mortar
the selected poems of Hartley Coleridge

Hartley Coleridge, prodigal son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, is perhaps the most unjustly neglected poet of the nineteenth century. Hartley spent his whole life in his father's shadow; this has coloured every assessment of his work since, and has saved many critics the trouble of reading him at all.

This selection of his work, with a critical essay by the editor and a foreword by Louis de Bernières, reveals Hartley as the author of subtle and intelligent poems that radiate his genuine love of humanity and nature.

"He wrote some of the most exquisite poetry, long neglected and now beautifully re-edited by Lisa Gee."
Duncan Wu, The Observer