Yvonne Barlow

My early career took me to rural Zambia where I was a nurse-midwife for a volunteer agency. The role was challenging – hospital care, rural clinics and teaching midwifery theory to students. The life allowed me to see the world in a whole new light. I listened and learned from other cultures. Later, while my children were young, I went back to university to study journalism. We were living in Texas, and good old Scottish nosiness gave me a break before I had even graduated. One of my lecturers said she didn’t know when the school had desegregated. It wasn’t rocket science but, using the old university newspapers, I found names and tracked down the first three black graduates. The series I wrote led to a job at the local paper and eventually to the national and international desk at The Dallas Morning News. I loved the work and collected wisdom from my colleagues like a squirrel gathers nuts.

We moved back to the UK, and I freelanced for US and Asian newspapers before turning to book publishing. I launched Bookline & Thinker, non-fiction, and later, Hookline Books, which specialised in fiction from graduates of MA writing courses. But I have always had stories running in my own head. Hence, Me, Myself, Mother. Taking a plot and characters through the lengthening landscape of a novel is not easy. Authors, I salute all of you.