Hello! Here’s a bit about me! I write hopeful and fantastical middle-grade stories brimming with nature, as I endeavour to bring sensitivity and lightness to difficult topics such as loss. I recently gained my MA in Writing for Young People with Distinction at Bath Spa University, where I finally learned how to write from the heart.
I have always loved exploring the world through words! During my years as a journalist meeting tight deadlines in busy newsrooms by day, I would spend my evenings and weekends writing fantastical adventures from the comfort of my lamplit narrowboat in London. Previously an international newswire correspondent for several years, I trained at The Independent, The Daily Telegraph and Channel 4 during my postgraduate studies in International Journalism. I also tightened my writing skills during work experience at a think tank in London.
I have also worked as a translator, following my BA in French and Spanish in the UK and Spain. When starting out as a writer, I gained diverse and exciting insights into the worlds of storytellers during my time as Arts Editor of an English-language newspaper in Madrid, interviewing and reviewing creatives in theatre, film and art in the capital.
Before writing for young people, I loved working as an English-language teacher for young children in Madrid and volunteering as an English teacher for young children in an orphanage in Guadalajara, Mexico.
In Mexico, my voluntary work in turtle conservation deepened my desire to care for the precious natural world through my writing. Besotted by nature, I ensure it has a central role in all of my stories.
When writing, I always keep in mind my own strong memories of adventure in childhood, from looking after my pet pig, cats, ducks and twelve rabbits and more, to writing and reading in treetops and building myself treehouses. Not to mention those moments when it all came crashing down, such as when starting new schools, or the time I overzealously rigged up a zip wire on a rotten branch. (Won’t be doing that again…)
In free time I dabble in art for fun and because it helps me to think, and I am eternally grateful to my cats and to my family for tolerating my continued attempts at playing the mandolin and ukulele.
In homage to wonderful moggies and the comfort they bring, I find a place for a cat in all of my stories for children.
Rebekah Curtis 