Irene is a storyteller who she writes fiction for children and adults and a scriptwriter for theatre, radio and site-specific experiences. Her one-woman show ‘Words, Women & War: Forgotten Female Voices of The Great War’ has been touring theatres since 2017; in 2018/19 she recreated the lives of many known and unknown women from history (including Ann Lister, Enid Blyton, Mrs Andrew Carnegie amongst others) for museums, libraries, schools, theatres and arts/literature festivals.

She’s author of numerous stage productions, has adapted JB Priestley stories for stage, is a director/dramaturg who’s appeared at Edinburgh Fringe, on TV and film. Irene is Artistic Director of Fresh Aire Productions a collaborative collective of writers, actors and musicians. Work has featured on radio stations and closed the Writing on Air Festival for the last three years.

In 2020 she created story-making online learning content for Freedom Studios; The Piece Hall, and videos on poetry styles for Saltaire Festival Poetry Competition; Irene will also be editor for the Poetry Festival Anthology. She’s a local history/story consultant with Historic England and Aire Rivers Trust; is writer/editor on creative projects with 26 Characters. For many years, Irene’s been running creative writing workshops for schools, festivals, museums, education departments and colleges across Yorkshire/North East.

Her published books include the spooky short story collections for 7-11s, Strange Tales in the Dales and Strange Tales in Bradford Dale. She’s a selected winner of the 2018 Waterloo story competition, with stories in many anthologies and editor of the anthology Stories from Stone.