Background

Kirk was born on April 14, 1942 in Birmingham, United Kingdom, the daughter of Benjamin James, an electrician, and Edith Florence (Hill) Marlow.

Education

Kirk attended University of Nottingham and finished it with honors in 1963, University of Sheffield with Diploma in Education (with distinction) in 1964 and Monash University with Master of Arts degree in 1970.

Career

Pauline moved to York in 2002 from Leeds, Essex and Berkshire. After working as an Assistant Senior Counsellor for the Open University, from 1988 to 1995 she was a Voluntary Resource Coordinator for Leeds Social Services. In 1996, a ‘New Beginnings Award’ from Yorkshire Arts enabled her to give up her ‘day job’, and she is now a free-lance writer and editor. As a performance poet and leader of creative writing groups, she has appeared at venues ranging from theaters and arts festivals, to schools, community halls and social services day centers. She also judges short story and poetry competitions.

Pauline’s editorial work includes A Survivor Myself: Experiences of Child Abuse, Yorkshire Arts Circus, and local history booklets. She is editor of Fighting Cock Press, which specialises in high quality poetry from the North and retains a close link to the Pennine Poets. In 2016 the press published a celebratory anthology, Fifty:Fifty, and organised events to mark the group’s fiftieth anniversary.

In collaboration with her daughter, Jo Summers, as PJ Quinn Pauline has written a series of DI Ambrose mysteries set in the 1950’s: Foul Play, Poison Pen and Close Disharmony. A third novel under her own name, Border Seven, was published in 2015.

Achievements

• Kirk won the Grant from Yorkshire Arts in 1980.

Works

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  • Owlstone 2002
  • Faith Tea and Other Poems 2006
  • No Cure in Tears 1997
  • Envying the Wild 2008
  • Scorpion Days 1982

Views

Quotations: “I am one of those odd people who have always wanted to write. Education gave me chances denied to my parents. I studied literature at the University of Nottingham, afterwards training to be a teacher of English. I married while still a student and moved to Australia, where I spent four years. I have retained connections with colleagues from that time, and the scenery of Australia—its vast distances, history, and attitudes—have had a formative effect on my work."

“Like many writers, I found academic study initially dried up my inspiration. For the first ten years of my writing career, I published articles and research papers, mostly related to continuing education. Following the birth of my second child, I began to write poetry, but it was only after moving to Leeds in 1979 that I gained confidence. Yorkshire has a rich cultural life, and groups such as the Pennine Poets gave me invaluable stimulus and criticism."

“As part of my work as a tutor in adult education, 1 edited a series of booklets on local history subjects. The idea of time came to fascinate me and is an important theme in both my novels. Waters of Time moves into the past, and then returns to the present. It felt natural to consider the future in my second novel. The Keepers. By setting the narrative two hundred years from now, I was free to imagine anything, so long as it was logically possible."

“The book is not a science fiction novel in the usual sense. It portrays people living two hundred years from now—our descendants—and considers what their lives might be like if present trends continue to develop. The story opens as England is recovering from a period of civil war, under the control of a faceless, unidentifiable group that enforces peace and happiness at any cost. The central character, Esther, risks life and love to break free."

“I have always been interested in ideas of freedom, human endurance, and dignity, but this was increased by my employment from 1989 to 1995 by the Leeds Department of Social Services. In 1995 an award from the Yorkshire and Humberside Arts Association enabled me to give up this post and become a full-time writer, but I am still involved with issues of caregivers and community arts.”

Membership

• Society of Authors

• Pennine Poets

Connections

Pauline get married to Peter Geoffrey Kirk, a civil servant, on April 4, 1964. This couple has 2 children: Jo Goldby and Geoff.

child:

Jo Goldby

child:

Geoff

husband:

Peter Geoffrey Kirk