Jacqueline Brown UK

Jackie Brown was born in 1944 in Sheffield and lived in West Yorkshire until she left to read French and English at Newcastle University.

In 1992 she won the Arvon / Observer International Poetry Competition with her collection Thinking Egg.

She said: Writing is half my life, people the other half, each feeding the other till a poem is sparked off.

She spent most of her adult life in education - mainstream, Adult Education and Special Education, as well as a couple of years in Greece teaching English as a foreign language. She tutored on several Arvon courses at Lumb Bank and Totleigh Barton and ran a series of workshops for physically and psychologically damaged people.

Jackie died in September 2008 after a long illness.