THE
KATES HILL PRESS, DUDLEY, ENGLAND
AUTHORS
JULIE
BANNER
Born in Birmingham’s Marston Green in 1973. Lived in Handsworth
and currently in Smethwick. Educated at Shirelands High School,
Smethwick. Julie works in the Biochemistry Department at City Hospital
and is undertaking a creative writing course.
JOHN
CORNFIELD JUNIOR
John Cornfield was born 1820 in
Hurst Hill, the first child of his parents’ marriage the previous year. Throughout much of his life he was known as
John Cornfield “Junior” to distinguish him from his father who had the same
name. Eight siblings followed, three of
who in due course took their families to settle in Barrow in Furness. There is certainly evidence in John’s work to
suggest he visited Monmouthshire, probably to see his father’s relatives who
had moved to South Wales about the time he was born. Apart from that, however, he seems to have
stayed fairly close to his roots for the rest of his troubled life.
The
occasional dating of his birth as 1827 appears to stem from his first published
work "A Round Unvarnished Tale of the Exploits of the Vicar of Sedgley", published in 1862, in which he
stated "I have lived in the village half the years allotted as the
period of man's existence on earth" implying he was 35 years old. He
had, in fact, moved out of the village to live in Lower Tower Street,
Birmingham for a period in the 1840s. The reason for this is not clear, but
could be connected to his first child Ann being born at that address in
November 1842, barely a month after John's marriage in October of that year to
Phoebe Grainger.
A
Wesleyan Methodist active in local politics, John was deeply and fervently
committed to community issues. He was an
ardent (and therefore generally popular) advocate of social reform and people’s
rights. A long-time member of the Dudley
Board of Guardians, the Sedgley School Board and, for
many years, the Coseley Local Board, he was also was
one of the supervisors who oversaw the rebuilding of Cann
Lane Chapel (according to "The Story of the Ancient Manor of Sedgley" by E A Underhill published 1942).
John Cornfield was without doubt an eccentric with a vivid imagination. The "Round
Unvarnished Tale" is an amazing 21-page tirade against
William Lewis, the Vicar of Sedgley, whom John
accused of demanding legally allowed but morally indefensible tithes from those
(including John himself) least able to pay.
At one point he suggests the aforementioned unscrupulous Reverend gentleman
must have imagined John to be living on the moon!
Perhaps nowhere was John’s
passion more evident than in two poems, "To Jenny, in Heaven"
and "To
Jenny, on the second anniversary of her interment”, undated but apparently written in 1871 and 1873. They are agonized outpourings of grief at the
loss of his younger daughter Eliza Jane in 1871 after
a six-month battle against tuberculosis. She was just 21. John and Phoebe had no more children.
That he committed suicide in
December 1890 there is no doubt. Throughout his life he had had a variety of
occupations: manufacturers clerk, nail maker,
firebrick manufacturer, commission agent and, latterly, pawnbroking. By 1890 he believed his pawnbroking
business to be in severe financial difficulties and for several months his
family and friends had feared to leave him on his own, so strange was his
behaviour. On the night of 6th December he left the house at
11.15pm. His wife and daughter Ann tried to follow but were delayed by a broken
door knob.
By the time they got outside he
had disappeared. Neighbours were called in to join the search but his body was
not discovered until the next day in a well on property he had previously owned
but had now sold. The opening to the well was very narrow and there was no way
anybody could have fallen in accidentally. His getting into the well was,
without doubt, a deliberate act. An inquest held December 9th 1890 held that he "Committed suicide by
drowning himself in a well whilst temporarily insane". He died
intestate, leaving an estate with a gross value of £237 19s 11d.
His wife Phoebe carried on his pawnbroking business until she died in 1893. There are no
direct descendants. Their only surviving
child, Ann, died unmarried in 1903.
Although he was a noteworthy
character, his poetry in his life, as in death, was not highly rated. His inquest report and obituary in the Dudley
Herald December 13th 1890 was over seventy lines long. It was not, however,
until line sixty-two that reference was made to his writing with the brief
mention, "He
was also of a literary turn of mind, and published some of his productions in
book form." TK Fellows, writing in “Staffordshire
Poets” published 1928 (less than forty years after John’s death)
remarks that “It is curious how circumstances appear to have obliterated his
traces locally in such a comparatively short time”.
The above
biographical notes on John Cornfield by Allison Gale, a descendent of the poet,
appear in his book Allan Chace and Other Poems,
published as a Black Country Classic by The Kates Hill Press in 2008.
BRIAN
DAKIN
Aka
Billy Spakemon
Born in Oldbury in 1952 to a working class family who all,
men and women, worked in one of the steel mills, which
had engulfed the landscape from the early 20th century. From an early age he
developed a fascination for language and storytelling. While brothers and
cousins went out and played Dakin would listen to the ‘ode uns’
talk about their lives and the lives of their parents and grandparents. Leaving
home at 16 to play professional football with Swindon reinforced his love of
his homeland. This passion found expression in writing that gradually gathered
steam, and, under the tutelage of Dot Caxton resulted in a BA in Fine Arts as a
Social Practice in which his work has become focused on language and identity.
Dakin has written hundreds of dialect poems, and numerous
short stories. As Billy Spakemon, his lively and
popular stage show sets his dialect verse to a musical background, where
anything from a Gregorian chant to an Eminem rap track is used to accentuate
the rhythm of the Black Country dialect. The effect is stunning. His work has
been published in Raw Edge and The Black Country Bugle and he has
made numerous appearances on Carl Chinn’s radio show. He has appeared on BBC 1 in Inside Out
and was filmed for the pilot of a quiz show in 2005. Never Mind The
Full Stops made it to BBC Four in May 2006 with Billy and Greg stokes
appearing in show 2. Billy took part in the BBC’s voices project, representing
the Black Country with Greg Stokes, Brendan Hawthorne, and Gary O’Dea.
In 2005 he set up the Creative Co-operative with Gary
O’Dea and Greg Stokes and put on the successful Alternative Black Country Night
Out. A second co-operative RoosterKateSpake (with Laurence Hipkiss)
was formed to promote spoken word performance in Dudley. After Greg Stokes’ departure, Brian set up
the Ommer and Chain club at the Holly Bush in Cradley with Hipkiss
later in 2007 as a platform for a fusion of folk and spoken word.
A collection of his dialect verse, Chant of the Mutha Tung was published by the Kates Hill Press in
2002, Cor Yow Shurrup
a Minit Billy! followed
in 2006: Billy produced a CD The Graiyte Eskairpe in 2005
followed by Sailskin Jones and a Boowt Load Moowa in
2006. A third collection of Billy’s
dialect poetry Tummy Jones – Odebury Mon was published in 2007. Echoes
of Foiano Di Valfortore, co written with Angelo Guidotti,
was published in 2008.
IRENE
M DAVIES
Born in Rowley in 1918. Educated at Currall Road Infants School, Hawes Lane Church of England
School, and then Siviter’s Lane Girls School, she did
not begin writing until later on in life although storytelling was always a
feature of family life. Following the death of Dad in 1975, Irene M Davies was
encouraged to write the experiences of her childhood and youth down by the
children in her family who had been brought up in that tradition where
storytelling and music hall song was the norm.
In so doing she produced not only a family history, but also a history
of her place, Rowley Village, and her time.
Originally entitled Milestones of Memory, the work was added to over the
years. The Christmas chapter in
particular has been expanded to incorporate the six Christmas stories by Irene
that appeared in The Black Country Bugle, one of which filled the front
page. Irene appeared on the Carl Chinn
Show in May 2006. Milestones of Memory was used in
schools as a valuable aid to understanding the social history of the Black
Country. Milestones of
Memory was published by The Kates Hill Press as A Pocketful of
Memories –Rowley in 2005. Irene died
in May 2006.
DUD
DUDLEY
Born in 1599 to Lord Dudley, Edward Sutton III by his
“concubine” Elizabeth Tomlinson. Dud Dudley came to manage his father’s iron works
and developed a method for smelting iron using sea coal. This was an important development in a time
when timber for the charcoal used in smelting was in short supply. He was beset by problems however, facing
natural disaster with the great May Day flood destroying one venture, lawsuits
from charcoal using iron masters, and riotous mobs. In the civil war he fought with the royalists
achieving the rank of Colonel. He was captured
and sentenced to death but escaped on the eve of his execution. He continued in his ventures until old age
but never achieved widespread success.
He died in 1684 leaving no offspring.
In 1665 he wrote Mettallum Martis
which set out the “trials and sufferings” he endured in his ventures. He did
not record his secrets however.
S.G.
GREY
S.G. Grey was born in 1959 and hails
from the Black Country district of Smethwick. He has spent most of his of his
life in the Pheasey/Park Farm suburb of Walsall,
being educated at Pheasey Primary and Barr Beacon
Schools.
After a year as a pre-vocational student
at Walsall School of Art Grey went on to successfully complete a 2 year Graphic
Design course in 1978.
For most of the following decade S.G.
Grey pursued a career in the advertising industry at agencies of varying size
across Staffordshire and Warwickshire, for the latter 4 years as a freelance
artist.
In the 1980s Grey was co-editor then
editor of the 60s influenced independent music fanzine Shapes of Things, creating and laying out the artwork,
interviewing, and writing numerous articles for the magazine. His efforts saw him featured in the first
ever broadcast of The Tube.
Co-written with M.D. Sandon,
S.G. Grey’s first book was the factual, rites of passage From Somewhere out of Here. Published in 1997 it is still in print
and selling.
Much of the photographic content and
text of From Somewhere formed the
core of a large exhibition staged at the Light House arts and media centre in
Wolverhampton in 2003 celebrating Modernist youth culture 1959 to 1988. In 2006, Grey's second book, the crime
fiction thriller A Cold Snap On Snow Hill
(2001), was one of the featured novels in another exhibition at Light House, Four Counties Noir, highlighting the
work of crime fiction authors from Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire
and Shropshire. S.G. Grey created and curated
both events.
Grey is currently completing the as yet
untitled follow up novel to Cold Snap.
His first title with The Kates Hill Press, The
Kingstown Agenda, appeared in 2008.
CLARICE
HACKETT
Born
in Blackheath in 1920, Clarice Hackett left school at 14 and went to work at an
office in Birmingham. She left there to
join BTH in Blackheath, working on the teleprinter
that was connected to head office in Rugby – electronic communication in the
1930s! She moved on to be a Dictaphone
typist in Halesowen then a telephonist and typist at a timber yard on the
Wolverhampton Road. While there the war
broke out prompting the Liverpudlian owners to
relocate to Hagley.
Clarice opted to stay in the Black Country, working at Accles and
Pollock and then Stewart and Lloyds.
Clarice married and brought up 4 children. She took up writing in earnest upon retiring,
contributing regularly to the Quinton and Halesowen News before going on
to write the Petticoat Page in the early years of the Black Country Bugle. She was for many years a leading light in
Dudley Writer’s Circle and has contributed to many
Black Country writers’ groups. Clarice Hackett published a volume of short
stories under the name of Annie Old Iron and a recipe book to raise funds for
leukaemia research.
She
has made numerous appearances on Carl Chinn’s radio show. The Sportsman was
published by the Kates Hill Press in 1996.
This was followed by Stories of the Old Black Country and Reflections
(2001) and Stories of the Old Black Country Volume 2 and More
Reflections (2002). Her second novel The Hairy Mouse will be
published in 2004. She has written her
autobiography, excerpts of which have appeared on the website
rowleyregis.com. In her later years she
worked on a historical novel called The Flight From
Worcester set in the English civil war and her autobiography. Clarice died in August 2006.
CAROL
HATHORNE
Born
in West Bromwich’s Hallam Hospital in 1944 and brought up on Tipton’s Lost
City, she was educated at St Mark’s CE Primary and Ocker
hill Secondary before going to Wednesbury County Commercial School. It was here that she began writing. She went on to work as a reporter on a local
newspaper, contributing to many magazines in her spare
time. She had a romantic novel published
by Robert Hale and from that moment on has had a highly successful literary
career. Hale went on to publish 8 more
of her novels under the name Carol Marsh.
The Scripture Union have published two Christian novels for adolescents
and Christana have published angels Keep Watch about
her time in Kenya. In 2002 the Black
Country Society brought out Slurry & Strawberries, the first part of
her autobiography. A further two parts, Bread
Pudding Days, and A Woodbine On The Wall
were to remain unpublished until 2006 when The Kates Hill Press brought
together all three parts in one volume, Five Minutes Love. Carol wrote a fourth part to the series All Shook Up which was published late
2007. Only Sixteen, the first of Carol Hathorne’s
novels to be published by the Kates Hill Press, appeared in 2008.
PETER
HEAD
Peter Head was born in Cradley in
1931 and lived there for eleven years Some of his clearest memories are of that time and feature
prominently in Chain-makers, Chapels and Pubs.
During the early forties, the family
moved to Hunnington, near Halesowen. From
there, Peter used to travel daily to King Edward VI Grammar School in
Stourbridge, passing along Colley Gate, of course, en route. He had gained entrance to the Stourbridge school from Colley Lane Junior Mixed School in Cradley.
Peter did his national service
between the ages of eighteen and twenty and worked for some years for an
accountant in Old Hill, before going to Leicester University to study
economics. After Leicester, Peter went
to work for Lancashire County Council in Preston and Denbighshire County
Council in Ruthin, before returning to Stafford and
the employment of Staffordshire County Council.
From there, his duties included dealing with officers and public from
Cradley Heath and Old Hill, which of course run into Cradley in the next
county. In the sixties, he was seconded
to work as deputy director of the West Midlands regional planning team which
served all the planning authorities in the West Midlands, including both
Staffordshire and Worcestershire.
Early retirement saw Peter and his
wife acquiring a small farm near Market Drayton, to breed and raise pigs and
calves during the eighties; followed in the nineties by a postcard business and
a tourist shop in south-west Ireland. In
2000, they went to live in Cyprus.
Peter began to write fiction and has
so far published three novels and two volumes of short stories. Before that, fifty years ago, he had work
published about the hosiery and footwear industries of Leicester, before
leaving academic life. Now, Peter is
writing a history of those industries in the second half of the nineteenth
century, based on his thesis of 1960.
Before that comes out, Chainmakers, Chapels
and Pubs is a less academic book, based as much on personal experience and
that of family members and friends, as on the general history of Cradley, as
its sub-title -- George
Head and his family in Cradley – indicates.
Above all, he says, it is a labour of love.
AMY
LYONS
Little
is currently known by the Kates Hill Press of Amy Lyons’ life other than she
lived in Wednesbury at the beginning of the 20th Century and
published Black Country Sketches in 1901.
The British Library records no further works.
SUE McMULLEN
Born in Birmingham 1963. Educated at Sheldon Heath Comprehensive. Sue designed the covers for the first two
Kates Hill Press titles, Black Country Stories and Sketches and A Witness For Peace. She
recently began a creative writing course with the OU. She lives in Warrington with her husband Pete
and son Nathan.
CAROL
MIDWOOD
Born October 1954 in Belfast, to a Protestant mother and
Catholic father. Due to tensions regarding
mixed religions the family moved to Stourbridge when she was five.
Educated at Stourbridge Girl’s High School, followed by a
teaching course in French and Education at City of Leeds and Carnegie College,
Leeds. At school Carol won several
creative writing contests and always wanted to be a writer. At college she
retained a keen an interest in The Black Country – and her 20,000 word English
Thesis was entitled, ‘The Black Country, as Portrayed by Traditional Songs and
Poetry.’
Carol
moved back down to Stourbridge in 1976 to marry John and settled in Wollaston.
She started teaching at Willingsworth High School,
Tipton in 1976 and remained there until 1989 when she left the profession to
jointly run a pub in Upper Gornal with John. This was
The Old Mill and was the original setting for her Edna and Arthur poems. The
inspiration came from the colourful assortment of clientele and many of the
customers often commented that they could see a bit of themselves in either
Edna or Arthur.
In
1993 John and Carol decided to return to their professional lives and sold the
business before returning to Stourbridge, where they still live with an
assortment of animals! To date, as well as the E & A poems, Carol has
written over two hundred poems, numerous short stories and six full length
novels. Some of her stories have been published in women’s magazines and she
has written articles for Reader’s Digest and The Black Country Bugle. She have
also won a few writing competitions in Writers’ News magazine. In October 2007
she appeared on The Weakest Link,
winning it!
Today
Carol teaches French at Redhill School, Stourbridge –
which used to be Stourbridge Girl’s High School. Edna and Arthur was published by the
Kates Hill Press in 2005. A series of
short stories based on the songs of Jon Raven, The Bawdy Bloody Black
Country appeared in 2007.
EDNA
MITCHELL
Born Wilnecote near Tamworth 1930, her recollections, The
Evacuees was published in the anthology A Pocketful of Memories – War
Memories in 2007.
BARRY
MORRIS
Born Liverpool
in 1953, Barry Morris was in the Royal Marines for 14 years serving in Northern
Ireland and the Falklands as well was in Vietnam with the UN. He left the forces in the mid 1980s and
returned to a Liverpool devastated by Thatcherism. In 1988 he began retraining as a social
worker at Sunderland going into practice with Sefton
Social Services in 1990. While in
Vietnam Morris kept a journal from which he developed Ghost Voices published
by the Kates Hill Press in 2003. A
collection of his short stories The Book Cellar was published in 2007. He is currently working
on a novel, Tiger Moth and a second collection of short stories.
TOSSIE
PATRICK
Born in Blackheath in 1923. As a little girl, she used to visit nearby Shenstone
Woods. These visits spawned a lifelong love of nature and her surroundings
while school gave her a lifelong love of poetry. She began writing her own poems and was a
member of the same writer’s circle as Clarice Hackett. Several of her poems were published in The Black Country Bugle.
Her volume recalling her Blackheath childhood, A Pocketful of Memories – Blackheath was published by the Kates Hill Press in 1998. This was followed in 2001 by the publication
of a collection of poems, Memories and Thoughts. Tossie has
written several short stories, some of which were published in Tales With A Twist in 2007 and her recollections of the war
years appeared in the anthology A Pocketful of Memories – War Memories
in the same year. Tossie
has made numerous appearances on The Carl Chinn Show on which renditions of her
poems have proved particularly popular.
SAMUEL
SMILES
Samuel Smiles
was born on 23rd December 1812 in Haddington,
Scotland, the first of eleven children.
His parents kept a general store there.
Leaving school at 14 he became an apprentice with Dr Robert Lewins before going on to study medicine at Edinburgh
University in 1829. While there he
contributed several articles on parliamentary reform to the Edinburgh Weekly
Chronicle. He returned to Haddington to practice medicine but continued to write
about parliamentary reform for the Leeds Times.
He was eventually asked to become editor of that journal in 1838,
remaining in post until 1845. In 1840 he
was made secretary of the Leeds Parliamentary Reform Association, a Chartist
organisation. By the end of the decade
however he was disillusioned with the organisation, some of its leaders
advocating the use of
physical force to achieve its ends. He became instead an exponent
of self help as the means by which individuals could escape the oppression of
the industrial age and it is for his writings on self help, and his biographies
of industrialists and engineers, as examples of achievement through self help,
that he is remembered.
His
works on self help were; Self Help
(1859), Character (1871), Thrift (1875), Duty (1880), Life and Labour (1887).
His
biographies include; The Life of George
Stephenson (1857), The Lives of
Engineers (1862), Industrial
Biography (1863), Boulton and Watt (1865), Men of Invention and Industry (1884).
A
criticism of the biographies is that Smiles is selective in the material he
includes, so as to support his self help thesis, and his work has become
identified as an exposition of “Victorian values.” Indeed he was criticised by socialists in his
own time for eschewing the notion of collective responsibility and action. The chapters on Dud Dudley and Andrew Yarranton from his Industrial
Biography, which would be of particular interest to Black Country readers,
were published as a Black Country Classic under the title Industrial Biography – The Black Country
Chapters in 2007.
RAYMOND
SMOUT
Raymond Smout was born and brought up in Roseville, Coseley and spent the first 26 years of his life
there. He moved south to join the
Hampshire Constabulary where he served for 31 years until retirement. He kept in touch with his native Black
Country however through friends, relatives, and frequent visits. Proud that his great grandfather was one of Coseley’s founding councillors he has always had an
interest in the town and its history, amassing a wealth of photos, articles,
maps, books and clippings over the years.
Before her death in 2001 at the age of 95, Raymond’s mother encouraged
him to write a family history. Having
achieved that, his unofficial history of Coseley
seemed a logical progression. This was published as part of the Pocketful of
Memories series in 2007. A Pocketful of Memories – Roseville was
published later in the same year.
COLIN
STOKES
Born
in Dudley in 1958, educated at Sledmere and Sir
Gilbert Claughton schools, he trained in Glasgow for
the merchant navy and travelled widely before returning to the west midlands to
work with Sandvik.
In the mid 1990s he went to work with gas generating company AES in
Wales. Concern with environmental issues
took him to Brazil. The Travel Log of a
Brazilian Nutter describes his first trip there. He is being encouraged to
describe his other travels, which are many and varied.
DES
STOKES
Born in Dudley in 1923, educated at Kates Hill and The Baylies Schools. Served in the Durham Light Infantry. Was a
Labour Councillor for St John’s ward in the late 1940s.
A man of many talents, he has worked in industry, driven coaches, ran the short
lived Desto Coaches, and has been a raconteur in his
own community doing stand up stints at the Cross Keys on Rowley Road. A CD of his material entitled “Uncle Des” was produced by Roosters
Studio in 2006.
GREG
STOKES
Born in Dudley in 1955. A chequered career has seen Stokes ride shotgun for
Dudley Co-op, work bars on Dudley Zoo, train as a clinical chemist in
Birmingham and ultimately develop and run a specialist unit in Abu Dhabi, which
investigated infertility. His return to the UK in 1985 held tragedy round the
corner as his father was murdered in the aftermath of the bombing of Libya by
the US. Stokes would go on to describe this in “A Witness For Peace”
(1994) In 1988 Stokes retrained as a social worker on Wearside
and worked through the grades to manage a busy children’s centre in Sandwell before
switching to community social work in Walsall in 1994 where he handled complex
child protection cases. Stokes began writing while in Leicester in the early
1980s, and has written several novels, over 200 short stories, and a travelogue
as well as “A Witness For Peace”. With Barry
Morris he developed a training program for workers helping families bereaved
through murder. He has appeared on BBC Two’s Split Screen discussing
media intrusion, in a BBC One documentary about the life of Lenny Henry, in a clip
for the BBC Four quiz show Never Mind The Full Stops, the BBC Two
programme The Comedy Map of Britain and in Lenny's Britain (BBC
One). He has made numerous appearances
on Carl Chinn’s radio show. Other radio
credits include Saul Abner’s show on WCR and Jimmy
Franks on WM. He was also involved in
the BBC Voices project, representing the Black Country with Billy Spakemon, Brendan Hawthorne, and Gary O’Dea.
In
2005 Stokes began live performances of his fiction at the Alternative Black
Country Night Out put on by the Creative Co-operative of which he was a founder
member along with Billy Spakemon and Gary O’Dea. A second co-op, RoosterKateSpake,
was formed when Stokes and Billy Spakemon were joined
by Laurence Hipkiss to promote spoken word
performance in Dudley. This ran until January 2007 when Stokes left to
produce the Alternative Black Country Revue with Lydon
Evetts (April/May 2007) and to pave the way for the
Kates Hill Press to produce Live Literature events in its own right.
Stokes
returned to lab work 2003 to 2008 but is currently a social work
practitioner. He lives in Kates Hill
with his wife Carol and daughters Louise and Lucy. Black Country Stories and
Sketches (1992), “A Witness For Peace” (1994), Tried by Prejudice (1999), The
Gulf (2004), A Pack of Saftness (2004), Second City
Stories (2006) and Brierley
Hills Cop(2008) have been published by the Kates Hill Press. An Audio Book The Grant featuring two
of his short stories was produced in association with Roosters Studio in 2005.
A second audio book Doctor, which
included performances by Louise Stokes and Brendan Hawthorne, was produced in
association with Poetry Wednesbury in 2007.
LOUISE
MARY STOKES
Louise Stokes was born in Somerset in 1962, and grew up in Shropshire before studying a B.A. in Philosophy and
Politics at Durham University, moving to Birmingham in 1984 to train as a
psychiatric nurse. She devoted fifteen years of her life to the health service,
working first with adults, and later specialising in
child psychiatry. During these years, she gained a Certificate in Individual
and Family Counselling, an M.A. in Sociological
Research in Health Care, and a Diploma in Child and Adolescent Psychiatric
Nursing. Up until the events of 1998, written about in this book, Louise had never
taken one single day off sick, even completing shifts only hours before the
births of three of her four children. The twelve months sick leave imposed upon
her by health service managerial bullies ended one vocation only to open the
door almost immediately to another when she embarked on a theatre studies
course at Birmingham Theatre School in 2000. From here, she went on to achieve
an HND in Community Theatre at Dudley College. The ability to write, which had
been given to her as a gift, she believes, to ease her pain in her darkest
moments, developed into a new career, and Louise now writes and performs for a
living as well as running drama and creative workshops for children and adults.
Her previous background has meant she now uses her drama and writing training
and skills to work creatively with people experiencing mental health issues as
well as with a variety of other people. Louise works both as co-director of
Black Country based Fizzog Theatre Company, and as a
freelance artist. Most of her work is issue based and awareness raising, using
both humour and serious social comment through the
mediums of literature and drama to try and challenge perceptions which are
discriminatory, prejudiced, ignorant, or just plain unhelpful.
She currently lives in Handsworth Wood, with
her husband Robin, four sons, and two cats.
As a member of the National Federation of Spiritual Healers, Louise is
also a practicing Spiritual Healer, and has completed her second Degree Reiki
Healer training. She believes that Faeries,
Angels and all her Guardians guided her through the dark tunnels of the health
service and brought her out into the Light of a better world. Her book Marooned was published by the
Kates Hill press in 2007.
Louise developed the character Kimmy Sue Anne,
a chav poet/philosopher, for the Alternative black
Country Revue. From Kimmy Sue Anne, a whole family of
characters developed, which have proved increasingly popular on the west
midlands comedy circuit. The collections The
Forts of Kimmy Sue Anne and Conversations With The Family Of The Grotesque
were published late 2007. Her first
novel Faerie Dust was published in
2008
JOHN
SUMMERTON
John
Summerton was born in Birmingham in 1959 and grew up a stone’s throw from
Birmingham City’s home of St Andrews. He went to Wyndcliffe
Road Junior and infants and Saltley Grammar School.
He left Birmingham in 1977, moving to Liverpool to complete a degree in
biochemistry. He spent the next four years realizing he wasn’t cut out for a
career in scientific research, moving to Southampton in the process. After a
year of doing various bits and bobs he embarked on a career in nursing, firstly
as a nursing assistant in a residential home for people with learning
disabilities. During these years he was the lead singer of the mildly legendary
and very noisy folk group Clause IV, once described by ‘Due South’ magazine as
‘Southampton’s answer to the Pogues’. He moved to
Macclesfield in 1988 and lives there to this day. He spent years as an activist
in the local Labour Party and even became a Borough Councillor but fell off the
left-hand edge of the party when Tony Blair became leader He qualified as a
mental health nurse in 1991 and has worked for the NHS ever since currently
managing a crisis and home treatment team. As a lifelong Blues fan and long
term employee of the NHS he was due a break and this came with the publication
of his first book ‘My Mate StAn – a personal
history of St Andrews and stuff’ by Kates Hill Press in 2006. He is a
frequent if irregular contributor of articles to the Birmingham City football
fanzine ‘Made in Brum’.
He
lives with wife Mary-Ann in an old draughty house on a hill with their two cats
and three unruly dogs. His first novel Taken Over was published in 2008
MARTYN
THOMAS
Born in Dudley in 1956. Educated at Kates Hill Primary School, Dudley Grammar School, and
Loughborough University. He
served for many years in the Fleet Air Arm.
He now lives on Vancouver Island where he works for a logging company
servicing the huge crane helicopters. These
duties took him to the fires of British Columbia in the summer of 2003.
SYLVIA
THOMAS
Born
in North Shields in 1927, bred in
Dudley.
Educated at the Intermediate School. Her piece, My War Memories has been on the
Kates Hill Press website since 2004 where it has been one of the most
frequently visited items. It was
published in the anthology A Pocketful of Memories – War Memories in
2007.
CAROL
WARD
Carol was born at the end of the
Second World War and has lived all her life in the Black Country. She was
educated at an all girl’s school where she discovered
George Orwell and thought she had died and gone to literary heaven…
Carol writes light verse in the
hope of amusing and entertaining. It is poetry
that is surreal and anarchic, based on contemporary issues and personal
observations. She considers herself a
modern Edward Lear of sorts – minus the Owl and The Pussycat. Carol tries to
create nursery rhymes for Grown Ups and also for children.
Carol has been featured in the
“Express and Star” and described by Peter Rhodes as “The Black Country’s Pam
Ayers”.
She has also featured three
times on the BBC’s Black Country website and some of her poetry has been
published on there.
Carol is a member of The Tettenhall Writers’ Group and has appeared at City Voices,
the Lamp Tavern in Dudley on the occasion of Women’s Day, and has made several
radio broadcasts. A collection of her poetry, Happiness Is…
was published by The Kates Hill Press in 2007.
JULIA
WAREING
Born
in Birmingham in the 1920s, wrote One of Eleven for her family. Published by the Kates Hill
Press as A Pocketful of Memories – Acock’s Green
in 2006.