Introducing: Barbara Mercer

Barbara Mercer is one of the Fairlight Books’ most original writers. She’s the author of the popular short story The Glow Worm. Born and raised in Manchester, Barbara read English at Royal Holloway, University of London. Throughout the years she has worked as a designer and editor in various publishing companies, with a specific focus in art, photography, film and graphics. Barbara is an exhibited artist, with her work shown at the Southbank Centre, History of Science Museum, University of Oxford, Modern Art Oxford and a touring show in London, Bath and Dublin with William Blake Society. Her multi-media solo show The Second Chamber, based on Leonardo da Vinci’s concept of perception and the brain, was showcased at Art Jericho, Oxford in 2012.

Barbara started writing as child. Her first misguided attempt at a novel about a hard-boiled US detective at the age of 10 ­was a disaster, but Barbara’s parents found the story hilarious. Since then she had her two novels, Oxford Girls and The Lovers of David Christian, published in the UK, Norway, Denmark and the States. Four of Barbara’s short stories were featured on BBC Radio 4: Two Girls … One a Gazelle, The Wife’s Tale, Illustrated poem published in The William Blake Birthday Book and We Lie Under the Sea. She also self-published a graphic novel Luminous: The Haunted Life of Tintoretto in 2015. Barbara also works on film scripts and radio plays.

A short Q&A with Barbara Mercer can be seen below:

Q: If you could travel in the past, which one of the great writers would you like to meet and why?

A: It would have to be William Shakespeare, or Henry James as a close second. I’ve dared to animate the afterlives of both these great writers with a graphic novel on the young Shakespeare and a short story on Henry James in Oxford. For both writers I’ve used the work to help me make cheeky assumptions about their actual thoughts, feelings and actions when not known. The graphic novel is still incomplete so I’d try to ask Shakespeare about his late teenage self, though I’m pretty sure he’d tell me to just go away and read the work.

Q: Do you have a lucky writing talisman? If so, what is it?

A: An antique brass door handle always sits below my screen, I think he’s a crocodile.

Q: If you could teleport yourself anywhere, real or fictional, where would it be and why?

A: Camelot – To be part of a society working in complete harmony with nature. Then I’d know for sure where it was.