Hello! I’m Claire Barker and I live on a wild and windy fringe of North Devon, England.

For many years I lived on a little old farm where I grew vegetables, apples and sunflowers. I herded pigs, sheep, chickens, geese and children all day long.

Now, whatever the weather – hail, snow, sun and wind – I can be found inside my shepherd’s hut, drinking tea, stoking my stove with wood and scribbling down story ideas. The imagination is a wonderful thing. It’s important to believe in your childhood dreams and, in this respect, my life turned out exactly as I hoped.

I did lots of things before I became a writer. I have a degree in English Literature and History and an HNC in Illustration. I’ve been an HLTA, an English tutor, a waitress, a childminder, an adult literacy volunteer, a puppeteer and a painter. I once even had a job untangling the fur of Persian cats in a spooky mansion.

I was a very shy little girl and would eat nothing but fishfingers until I was seven years old.

My favourite things are trees, animals, children and wrestling with words until they do as they are told.

Author of #PicklewitchandJack, @clairebarker told us all about how nature inspired her story and her characters 🧙‍♀️ 🌰 🐛 🦉🌲 🔭 pic.twitter.com/HRdPqaNjR3

— Faber Children’s (@FaberChildrens) October 11, 2018

If you would like to know about my typical writing day, here is a link to a blog post I wrote for the Faber Children’s site. I paint a bit too.

The Hare and the Harvest Moon by Claire Barker

Here’s a podcast I recorded with Jo of Library Girl and Book Boy https://anchor.fm/librarygirl/episodes/An-interview-with-the-PickleWitch-and-Knitbone-Pepper-author–Claire-Barker-e8ap8l?fbclid=IwAR0Zz35G4kuKTrfzbiPFdqS9oLcH9Vp648pVPo3OcuGHmirBEgN8qTTlCTI There are some children reviews, right at the end too.