Details of talks given by Di Castle
Di speaks on Deaf Awareness and Introduction to Sign Language (BSL). She also provides talks on her writing life and writing poetry. She has recently completed her memoir of growing up in the 1950s and 1960s. She explains the process of writing a memoir and gives tips. As a writer she works on several WIPs including her adult/YA novel, Sharing the Silence, about two sisters – one deaf and one hearing, due out February 2025, and The Prune, a humorous novel about struggling with technology in the 1980s. The Last Chance will be out in the spring of 2025 - here an early retirement does not go to plan. Her memoir Red House to Exodus is out now. Di enjoyed a teaching career and nomadic existence in Hertfordshire, Oxfordshire, Middlesex, South Bucks and Swanage. She now lives in Southsea. She has three daughters and seven grandchildren.
As a child she enjoyed A A Milne's poetry and later grew to love the humour and bouncy verse of Spike Milligan and Pam Ayres. After leaving St Albans Girls’ Grammar School she trained as a secretary at St Albans College of Further Education and later went on to teach secretaries. However, she had always wanted to be a writer.