Sharon Blackie

A first in psychology from Liverpool, then a 1985 doctorate in behavioural neuroscience from London on the brain mechanisms behind anxiety and panic: Sharon Blackie's grounding is laboratory science, and dozens of peer-reviewed papers carry her name. Born in County Durham in 1961, she left research, kept a croft in the north-west Highlands of Scotland, lived on the Isle of Lewis and in Ireland and Wales, and added an MA in Celtic Studies from Wales in 2019. If Women Rose Rooted (2016) came from that double training, setting old Irish, Scottish and Welsh stories of women beside her own story of walking away from a life that no longer fitted. It found its readers slowly, by recommendation. With her husband David Knowles she ran the independent Two Ravens Press from 2006, and she edited the nature and culture magazine EarthLines from 2012 to 2017. Later titles include The Enchanted Life, Hagitude and Wise Women. Courses, retreats and online programmes fund the work; the credential behind them is psychology and mythology, not medicine or ministry.