Suzanne Batty lives in Manchester where she writes, teaches creative writing, performs her work, edits poetry magazine Rain Dog and digs her allotment. She is interested in creative writing as a tool for community and personal development and was a founder member of The A6 Poets – an urban poetry project. Suzanne’s first collection of poems The Barking Thing is published by Bloodaxe Books. She is lecturer in creative writing at Sheffield Hallam University, working on a second collection of poems, an experimental work of short fiction and a theatre script. In addition to academic/creative interests in discourses around female and gay sexuality, she is interested in the creative art as an act of healing/recovery. She teaches creative writing to people recovering from mental illness and in local communities to this end.