Born and brought up in London, Sue moved North at the age of 18 to study for a degree in Politics at Lancaster University. Having been keen on drama since the age of seven, and an enthusiastic participant in school plays each year, she somehow managed to contrive her degree courses to include a couple of units in Theatre Studies, and due to a few memorable roles on stage developed rather unrealistic expectations of her own talents. Sadly, on leaving University and launching her career as an Oscar-winning actress, these triumphs turned out to be a case of 'big fish in small pond', and after a few pathetic and spectacularly unsuccessful attempts at answering small ads in The Stage, Sue struggled to know what to do next.
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With a history of youth club work in her holidays and spare time, she began helping at a drop-in centre for young people in Liverpool, then worked at a boys' club in Speke, before finally wondering if teaching might be for her. Her first day in front of a class told her that was exactly where she belonged.
Eventually, she realised...
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Having completed her teacher training in secondary French, Music and Drama, Sue spent 5 years at a Lincolnshire Secondary Modern school, then taught in places as disparate as a technical college in France and a prison in Scotland before finally retraining for Primary, where she has wallowed happily for the past 20 years, running after-school drama clubs with an attendance hit rate of at least 80% of the eligible pupil population each year, sometimes 100%. The annual productions are legendary.
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| It was a house move and subsequent unplanned break from teaching in the early 90s which led to Sue's second career as a writer. This three-year period out of the classroom saw dozens of her stories published in teenage magazines like Jackie, Patches and Just Seventeen, plus articles in newspapers and women's magazines including Woman's Realm and She. It also saw the production of the first drafts of some very funny plays and musicals for kids for which she never found a publisher until the advent of the genius that is Lazy Bees.
The rest is history. |
