Background

Ethnicity: Cooke's parents come from a place called Dominica in the West Indies.

Trish Cooke was born on March 22, 1962, in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, to Abiah Basarbas Cooke, a cooper and engineer, and Agnes Cooke, a housewife. She comes from a large family, with six sisters, and three brothers.

Education

Cooke attended Buttershaw Upper School in Bradford (now Buttershaw Business and Enterprise College) and that’s where she discovered the theatre. Later, she attended Leeds Polytechnic (now Leeds Beckett University) and Ilkley College (now Bradford College) when she left school. Her intention was to do a teaching degree. She transferred from her teaching course to do a Bachelor of Arts degree in Performing Arts, that she received in 1983.

Career

Trish moved to London in 1984 and worked with a theater company called The Black Theater Co-op for six months as a stage manager. Also, between 1984 and 1988, Trish worked as an actress in lots of Theater in Education companies and Community Theater Groups. In 1988 Trish was writer-in-residence at Liverpool Playhouse. Her first stage play Back Street Mammy, about teenage pregnancy, was produced by Temba Theatre Company at the Lyric Hammersmith in 1989 and then by the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 1991. That year she also wrote for EastEnders (BBC). Between 1988 and 1996 Trish was a presenter and scriptwriter on Playdays (BBC).

From 2002 to 2003 Trish was writer-in-residence at BBC North. She has written several plays for BBC radio, including a mini-series called Unspoken. Television work includes writing for Doctors (BBC 2004/5) and being a storyliner for Emmerdale (Yorkshire Television) in 2013. Trish has written a string of five-star pantomimes for the Theater Royal Stratford East, including Cinderella (2008) and Rapunzel (2017/2018). In 2015, Left Hangin’ was performed at the Bush Theater for Black Lives, Black Words.

In addition to being a playwright and screenwriter, Trish is an accomplished children’s book author. Her numerous books for children include So Much (1994); The Grandad Tree (2000); Catch! (2004); Full, Full, Full of Love (2004); The Diary of a Young West Indian Immigrant (2001); How Anansi Got His Stories (2011); and Look Back! (2013).

Trish is currently the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Huddersfield and patron for the Leeds based theater company Alive and Kicking. She lives in Bradford and runs creative writing workshops in schools.

Achievements

• Trish’s work has been highly acclaimed and has won several awards and recognitions. Her book So Much won the Smarties Book Prize, the She/WH Smith’s Under-Fives Book Prize and the Kurt Maschler Award. It was also Highly Commended for the Kate Greenaway Medal and was shortlisted for both the Sheffield Children’s Book Award and the Nottinghamshire Children’s Book Award. The book was voted one of the 100 best children’s books by Time Out in 2016.
  
  Her five-star pantomime Cinderella was the first panto to be nominated for an Olivier award and Rapunzel broke all box office records at the Theatre Royal Stratford East and won the Best British Pantomime Award 2018 for best musical supervision.

Works

More photos

• book

  • So Much

    (A lively, rhythmic text and bold, full-color artwork capt...)

    1994
  • The Grandad Tree

    (To console his younger brother Leigh on the loss of their...)

    2000
  • When I Grow Bigger

    (When the older children devise an uncomfortable plan to m...)

    1994
  • Mr. Pam Pam and the Hullabazoo

    (Mr Pam Pam and his baby are regular visitors to the house...)

    1994
  • Look Back!

    (A beautiful picture book that tells children that it is o...)

    2014
  • Zoom!

    (Hurricane Kieron and Rusharound Ria are always in a hurry...)

    2000
  • Full, Full, Full of Love

    (On Sunday, Mum took Jay Jay to Grannie's house. "I'll go ...)

    2003
  • Mammy, Sugar Falling Down 1989
  • Mrs. Molly's Shopping Trolley 1991
  • Waiting for Baby 2000

Views

Quotations: "You need to have a sense of humor and imagination to write children’s stories. Adults tend to lose themselves in the seriousness of life, whereas children have a simplistic approach. My five-year-old son reads all my stories and reviews them for me. He’s my best critic."

"I am always observing and listening, so if I am writing a book or a script, I end up using real life as a starting point to create my characters.The truth gives me a reason to write it. Where it goes from there is something else."

"You are allowed to get so far and then no further. My survival tactic in order not to give up or get bitter about it is basically to move from publishing, to TV to theatre to radio to film. When I move around I am able to take a fresh spin on things and it helps me to get motivated again. I can’t lie it has been tough but I will keep on."

Personality

When Cooke was about four or five, she sprayed what she thought was hairspray on her hair, except it was perfume and her hair dropped out! It took ages for it to grow back. She has always liked performing, and she and her sisters used to do shows for their friends and neighbors. Trish first discovered how much fun writing could be when she started writing in her diary.

Her first pet was a green budgie called Joey. Her big brother, Joe, fed it one of her sister Mary’s johnnycakes, and the next day it was found dead at the foot of its perch. She can play the recorder really well. She loves singing and used to be the singer in two ska bands. Her book, So Much, is featured in a portrait of former Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, and his wife, which is hanging in the National Portrait Gallery.

Cooke's favorite meal is rice and peas and curried chicken, with lots of fried plantain. Her favorite pudding is banoffee pie. Her favorite place to holiday is St Lucia. She loves the white sands, the blue sea, and the peace and tranquillity. Her favorite place to write is in front of a beautiful landscape – on a verandah in the West Indies, or looking out on hills from her office window in Yorkshire.

Connections

On July 24, 2000, Trish married Devon Ramsden, a residential officer. They have two children, Kieron Ramsden and Jermaine Ramsden.

Father:

Abiah Basarbas Cooke

Mother:

Agnes Cooke

child:

Kieron Ramsden Cooke

child:

Jermaine Ramsden Cooke

husband:

Devon Ramsden

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television, and Other Fields In response to the escalating need for up-to-date information on writers, Contemporary Authors New Revision Series brings researchers the most recent data on the worlds most-popular authors.
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