A member of Commonword’s Identity writing workshop in the late Eighties, Cheryl first perfomed her poetry with other Identity members at the Old Steam Brewery, Oxford Road. She’s proud to have served on its board and as its chair for a few years in the Nineties. She went on to become artistic director of Running to Paradise, which had a sell-out hit at the inaugural Manchester International Festival with the UK premiere of Pulitzer-Prize-winning Suzan-Lori Parks’ Venus for Panda . In 2011, she directed sell-out immersive hit with Another Country for Community Arts Northwest. She served as Children’s Director for Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre’s production of A Raisin In The Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. As Director-in-Residence at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre, she directed the first production of The Ching Room by Alan Bissett [nominated for Critics’ Awards for Theatre in Scotland and brought to the Royal Exchange Theatre Studio in October 2010]. She also produced the Traverse’s The World Is Too Much breakfast plays [Edinburgh Fringe First 2009], directing Heaven by Simon Stephens and Posthuman Satire Slash Romance by Chris Hannan for the series. She’s been Associate Director New Writing/New Work at Contact, won an MEN Award for Best Studio Production directing Rona Munro’s Iron, and won another MEN Theatre Award for writing community play Heart And Soul for Oldham Coliseum Theatre. Cheryl was artist-in-residence as a poet for the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games. She has had over twenty stage and radio productions as a writer. In 2011 she directed an outdoor immersive extravaganza, A Game of Consequences, with Contact Young Actors’ Company as part of x.trax festival, while in 2012 she directed and wrote an updated version of Aristophanes’ The Birds for new disabled theatre The Unusual Stage School as part of Whose Flame is it Anyway? in the run-up to the Paralympics. She directed an immersive play with a cast of women refugees and asylum seekers, Heart’s Core, for Community Arts Northwest. Commonword published her first solo collection of poetry, Alaska, in 2014.