Celia Roberts was published in some of the earliest Commonword publications. She had worked at Kendal’s department store in Manchester, but mostly worked as a secretary, until at the age of 23, she began a degree course at Bolton.

She said, ” I have always been interested in writing, using it mainly for expressing thoughts that I couldn’t express out loud…My view of what is true to life did not always coincide with what I read and it came as a shock to em to find that the written word was not sacrosanct. I now believe in questioning basic assumptions and other people’s value judgements.”