All of my work springs from an intense connection to the land, which is rooted as much in the mything and storying of place as it is in the physical environment. I run online courses and residential retreats working with myth and storytelling to help people along their individual paths of transformation. A tribute to the art of storytelling that is itself an affecting and inspiring story’ and by The Scotsman as ‘… powerful (reminiscent of The English Patient), filmic, and achieving the kind of symmetry that novels often aspire to, but rarely reach.’ 'If Women Rose Rooted', a nonfiction book about women, Celtic myth, place and belonging was published in 2016, 'The Enchanted Life' in 2018, and 'Foxfire, Wolfskin and other stories of shapeshifting women' in September 2019. My first novel The Long Delirious Burning Blue was described by The Independent on Sunday as ‘Hugely potent. My husband David Knowles and I founded literary publisher Two Ravens Press (now under new ownership) in 2006, and in 2012 launched EarthLines Magazine, a full-colour print publication for writing about nature, place and the environment.

My passion during those years was, and still is, creating transformation in individuals and groups. There I returned to my roots, in practice as a therapist specialising in narrative psychology, myth- and storytelling, as well as in other creative imagination techniques and clinical hypnotherapy. After a few twists and turns, including some unwise years advising a tobacco company on smoking and health and safer cigarettes, and the acquisition of a master’s degree in Creative Writing, I moved to a croft in the north-west Highlands of Scotland.

After studying psychology, I spent several years as an academic neuroscientist/ psychologist specialising in the field of anxiety and panic, and working at the Hôpital Pitié-Salpêtrière in Paris and the Institute of Neurology in London. There I returned to my roots, in practice as a therap I was born in the north-east of England, a Celt through and through: my family and ancestry is both Scottish and Irish, and I was raised on an imaginatively rich diet of Irish myth, poetry, music and history. I was born in the north-east of England, a Celt through and through: my family and ancestry is both Scottish and Irish, and I was raised on an imaginatively rich diet of Irish myth, poetry, music and history.

If Women Rose Rooted by Sharon Blackie