Hi! I’m
Barbara Towell author cum English teacher. Until a few years ago I taught full-time, but now I teach part-time at a high school in the London Borough of Harrow where I live.
Although I have been writing since I could put sentences together, other than selling a series of children’s stories to Dial-a-Telephone Story, it is only in recent years that I became a published author.
With beginner’s luck, I succeeded in getting a number of articles published in a national magazine as well as one on-line. Soon after, my novel, A Little Piece for Mother was published. This rapidly gained 5 star reviews from Amazon customers. In 2014 Patchworks, my poetry anthology was also published. The poems reflect on a variety of thoughts and events from my life.
I am passionate about singing and since a kid have been writing songs. In 2013 the musical Faith is the Key which I co-wrote with my husband, John had its second public performance, this time at the Dumfries Festival in Scotland. This I feel was my greatest theatrical and musical achievement since winning the Harrow Millennium Carol Competition in 2000.
A Little Piece for Mother stands as my most important work. Not only because it tells a compelling story of the lasting impact of the Holocaust on a Jewish immigrant family from Poland, but because it has a deeper message. This, I hope will touch and influence all those men and women who read the novel. It is rooted in my own family history as my father was a Slovak Jew who escaped Nazi persecution unlike many other of my relatives who died in Auschwitz. However, the Kalinski family is definitely imagined and nothing like mine. My background was a factor in writing the novel, but inspiration for the story also came from poem Real Chocolate by Stewart Florsheim.
Writing is like an addiction, it is hard to resist, but for me so is teaching and facilitating. I get so much satisfaction knowing that I have gone some way in helping others to fulfil their potential as writers. It is therefore no coincidence that I am leading the Pinner Writers’ Group and am always happy to provide Creative Writing Workshops as well as author talks. In addition, in a voluntary capacity, I am assistant editor for St. John Fisher’s, (North Harrow) magazine The Pylon. This too brings its own rewards.
I am a person who loves many, many things. Sometimes it’s hard to choose what to do first and foremost. I love cats, music, sport; especially tennis. Reading is a daily must, acting is something else I enjoy, but most of all I love people. I think, perhaps, this has enabled me to become a compulsive writer.
Barbara Towell