Pam Keevil

Pam Keevil (born 1954) grew up in a small village called Colney Heath, near St Albans in Hertfordshire where she attended Francis Bacon Grammar School before reading history at York University. She spent one year working at Terry's Chocolate factory which means she now rarely eats chocolate before deciding to become a primary schoolteacher. She completed the prestigious PGCE at Goldsmiths College in 1977. She taught for over thirty years in a variety of school in London, Essex and Gloucestershire and was a head teacher for sixteen of those years.

Like many people she began writing through a love of reading; a love that began as a little girl when she would climb a tree in her garden, perch in the crook of the branches with a book and a handful of chocolate biscuits. She wrote her first stories at the age of eleven but the idea of becoming an author was for people who did English Literature degrees or had famous relatives who already wrote or published. Not for her. As a primary school teacher she was immersed in children’s literature, however and realised she could create as compelling a story line as many of the books her pupils were encouraged to read.

‘Write what you know’ is the advice given to would be writers so she assumed she would write for children. Wrong! She was sitting in a course at Swanwick Writer’s Summer School in 2012 when she realised she would never be a children’s writer; her heart wasn’t in it.

She began to write short stories but everyone had a romantic twist. The solution was obvious. Except when she embarked on an MA in Creative and Critical Writing, she realised what she really enjoyed was the psychological interplay between characters and the relationships between them.

So far, she has three books published and all have strong dynamics between the characters, notably the last, Mayflies which contains a love square and advice from the supernatural!