A southerner who moved to the north in 1996, Sheelagh lives under the left armpit of the Angel of the North and a blink of an eye from the Millennium Bridge. Born in Devon, educated in Dorset with her family home in Berkshire. She worked in fringe/youth theatre with a view to training as Stage Manager but became more interested in working with young people. She trained at Bradford & Ilkely College in youth and community workwhere she discovered rock-climbing and punk music. For the next 20 odd years she worked in variety of community projects including Project Manager for one of the first Foyer unemployment & housing projects in the country for the YMCA, Community Worker for the Urban Mission Centre, St John's College, Durham and a Co-ordinator for TWM's initiative, the Museum Outreach Online Project based at the Discovery Museum, Newcastle. Whilst working for TWM Sheelagh trained part-time for ministry and was ordained in July 2005. Like
Noah in the book, she had dyslexia (which makes writing novels and sermons interesting)
and is partially sighted - not that stops her cycling or travelling. She originally started to write a book about a time travelling ship housed in a museum, (which became the fictional film in the book). One day her daughter, then aged 9, came home upset. Her Class Teacher had asked everyone who they wanted when they grew up. Her daughter had said she wanted to be a vet but the teacher told her she was not bright enough to be vet because of her sciences whilst not batting an eyelid at other children's desire to be famous celebrities. Recalling her experience of working with young people in theatre Sheelagh realised that many young people join theatre schools or groups for other reasons than stardom and so she began to write about them and Natural Talent was born. She is working on a second novel; a sequel to Natural Talent and series of children's fable stories. |  |