About

Ros Barber

Ros is a published poet and fiction writer, born in the US but based in the UK. She has been featured on BBC Radio 3’s The Verb; BBC Radio 4’s Poetry Please; and published in numerous anthologies (Faber, Virago, Seren, Telegraph Books, Forward Poems of the Year) as well as the UK national press (Guardian, Independent on Sunday).  Her short fiction has been published by Bloomsbury and Serpent’s Tail. Her last book, Material (Anvil 2008), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.

Ros has over 14 years’ experience helping others to write, including over a decade teaching Creative Writing for the University of Sussex.  Her writing has been funded by Arts Council England, the Author’s Foundation, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.  A recent foray into academic writing as part of a Creative Writing PhD have led to essays on Christopher Marlowe and Shakespeare authorship being published in Critical Survey, Rethinking History, and Christopher Marlowe the Craftsman (Ashgate 2010). She had recently completed a 72,000-word ‘fictional autobiography’ of Christopher Marlowe, written entirely in verse (iambic pentameter.

None of her recent success would have been possible without the techniques she used to overcome her fears and limiting beliefs, and passing on those techniques has become her passion.

Kate Marillat

At the other end of the experience spectrum, Kate has been a full time freelance writer since January 2010. After finishing her degree in English and Media with a secret desire to write novels she thought that the writer’s path was too hard and chose a well paid corporate  lifestyle instead. Although she continued to write short stories, PR copy and had a piece of work used for the Brighton festival it was five years before decided to listen to that that inner voice and took six months off to live and write in Paris where she started her first novel.

A year and 55,000 words later in Spring 2009 Kate attended Ros’s writing course “Be the Writer you Dream of Being” where she realised she had to change her attitude towards her writing ability before any of her literary dreams were going to become true.

As a result of practicing, and becoming an expert in, the techniques that she learnt on the course, Kate gained the self belief to leave the security of her corporate lifestyle to become a full time freelance writer. Her novel is almost complete and she is supporting herself through copywriting.  It was her change in attitude that led her to become the writer she dreamt of being.