About Claire

 

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.

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.