Podcast #8: Barney Bardsley - Memoir Writing Workshop

Leeds Lit Fest is delighted to have commissioned ten new and original podcasts for the 2020 Festival funded by Leeds Inspired, part of Leeds City Council.

Five podcasts were recorded during the Festival itself and feature writers leading sessions in the ‘Inspiring the City’ workshop series. Each podcast features the writer talking about their preparation for the workshops they were leading in a range of venues around the city, their own experience in the form, as well as interviews with, and writing by, workshop participants.

Barney Bardsley is an author, dance-movement practitioner, and teacher of T’ai Chi and creative writing, who lives in Leeds. Born in Essex, but with northern blood in her veins, she went on to study German and Russian at Hull University, before moving to London in the 1980s to become an arts journalist. She was books and arts editor at Tribune newspaper from 1984 to 1986, and her first book, on women and crime, “Flowers in Hell”, was published in 1986. In 1987 she trained in dance and the physical arts at the Laban Centre, studied T'ai Chi, and worked with actors and drama students in London and Hungary. In 1996 she moved to Yorkshire with her husband and daughter, and  started teaching independent classes in  T’ai Chi and movement, as well as being carer for her husband Tim, when he became terminally ill with cancer. After Tim died in 2004, she wrote a memoir about grief and recovery through gardening, “A Handful of Earth.” She now writes features for the Guardian, Psychologies Magazine, Woman’s Weekly, Yorkshire Post and Femail. Her latest memoir “Old Dog”, about the therapeutic power of animals, was published by Simon and Schuster in 2013. Since 2009, her main theatre home has been Leeds Playhouse, where she works on the Creative Engagement programme, teaching movement classes and creative writing. She is also a writer and performer for Alan Lyddiard's Performance Ensemble, based in Leeds. Barney is a gardener; a translator - and lifetime student -  of Hungarian; and she plays the ukelele and sings.