Barbara Gamble

Barbara Gamble is a novelist who writes novels of social realism. Her characters are often rebels or failures, misfits or outcasts. For her, writing is about the challenge of inventing characters for whom not much comes easily and who find the business of living hard work. Her first novel Out of Season was runner-up in the Constable Trophy for the best novel set in the north of England as well as being longlisted for the Booker prize in 1985. The novel was also published in paperback both in the UK and later in Australia. Her second novel Partial Recoveries, a comedy drama set in the North, followed two years later. Barbara was awarded a £10,000 Time to Write award by New Writing North for her third novel Stargazing, set against the backdrop of the recession.

Barbara has worked as a press officer for a global drinks company, as a bingo caller in a seaside town, as a reporter and feature writer in London and as a senior lecturer in film and media at a Teesside college. For three years she worked as a creative writer with young male offenders in the North-east and edited a collection of prison short stories. As well as working as a freelance journalist and mentoring young creative writers, she is currently on the final draft of her fourth novel.