HER STORY
When Becky drinks tea, her protruding little finger belies her upper class roots but by the time of her birth, the family wealth – largely acquired from the spoils of the Oak Tannery in Leeds and the roulette tables of Monte Carlo - had been squandered.
Her father’s army career meant that early childhood saw her learning to swim in the Australian oceans, tree-climbing in the woods of Rheindahlen and consuming every horror and science fiction story she could lay her hands on in her hometown of Harrogate. At the age of nine, she moved to Bradford, where she and her younger brother and sister were brought up on nothing but her beautiful bohemian mother’s student grant and maintenance payments from her steady and much-loved father.
Although she had written stories since she could pick up a pen, it was the trials of puberty that threw her into the arms of poetry. Staring out of her attic window at Bradford’s haunting industrial landscape, Becky found that writing provided a way to make sense of the world around her (even if most of what she wrote then was terrible).
Becky first worked as a shop assistant, a cleaner and bar maid. Then, after a wild period during her late teens, she gave birth to her son and returned to college where she undertook an Access course in Arts and Humanities. Her tutors urged her to ‘do something ambitious and challenging’. Becky was accepted to study English at The University of Leeds and moved to the city with her son. She graduated in 2002 with a 2:1 and half a novel in her writing desk, determined to be a writer but unsure as to how she would make a living.
That September, a friend told her about a community arts course run by Artlink West Yorkshire. Becky enrolled and was delighted to discover that it was possible to make a living helping people to write creatively. To keep herself busy, she simultaneously undertook voluntary work in a community café, for a housing project and in the community arts field, giving time and energy to the people of Burley whilst gathering inspiration for her writing.
PRESENT
Becky is now a writer (insert link to writing page), creative writing facilitator (insert link to workshop page) and performer (insert link to performance page) based in Leeds. An average week for Becky might include playing storytelling games with adults with learning disabilities, freewriting to music with a general community group, helping a private pupil to develop the plot for his or her novel, creating stories to explain universal questions e.g. ‘Why is the sky blue?’ with 12-16 year olds, reading as a guest artist at a spoken word event, sending off a poem to a competition and filling in a funding application.
In her spare time, Becky can be found watching QI with her son, walking, attending the theatre and spoken word nights, cooking for friends, and listening to the owl that periodically visits her roof. She hates the word collateral damage, is interested in people, places and ideas and believes adventures can be found everywhere – the summer of 2010 saw her riding a rickshaw around the streets of Leeds, picking blackberries on Ilkley Moor and swimming in the Baltic Sea.
Becky is thankful to lots of people for their love and support and to Radio 4, which is a great substitute for the books she doesn’t have time to read. She is relieved that the years of attempting to feed and clothe herself and a growing son on £12.52 a week now appear to have past.
If you are interested in working with Becky please call her on: 07792266816
email her at write@beckycherriman.com