At age 11, Mandy Sutter began her writing career with a film script for Walt Disney. On returning it, Walt Disney were kind enough not to point out the script’s close resemblance to The Jungle Book. Encouraged, Mandy published a number of poems in the school magazine and when she went to University (York) submitted a poetry portfolio as 10% of her degree.
Some years later, Mandy took a correspondence course in journalism and ended up leaving a perfectly good career in Marketing to become a freelance writer, imagining that fame and fortune was just around the corner.
Glamour eluded her. But writing brochures and adverts for local firms and articles for the London marketing press had its own attractions, and she became northern correspondent for a handful of London papers and magazines.
Poems and short stories began to appear in good literary magazines and on BBC Radio 4. She published two poetry chapbooks: Permission to Stare (Slow Dancer) and Game (Smith/Doorstop).
She began teaching creative writing at the University of Leeds, writing several new modules for them, including one for the Medical School centred on the concept of doctors as writers.
She was one of four women writers showcased in Tindal St Press’s ‘Are You She?’ anthology in 2006 and then co-wrote two books for the MAMA East African Women’s Group in Sheffield: Travelling with the Bedouin Women of Hawd, and The Asylum Seeker, both published in 2007.
She took a Writing MA at Sheffield Hallam, where she wrote a novel and more short stories and passed with Distinction. She became Writer-in-Residence at Leeds General Infirmary, working with patients and staff using writing. She ghost-wrote a book for Yorkshire Forward and wrote case studies about Neighbourhood Renewal projects for local Government.
Today she continues to publish poetry and short stories. She writes a successful blog called ‘The Reluctant Gardener’, about her Dad, who took on a new allotment aged 87. She is a director of Ilkley Literature Festival, and with fame and fortune still just around the corner, feels blessed to have a working life doing what she loves best: writing.