Carol Midwood

Born October 1954 in Belfast, to a Protestant mother and Catholic father. Due to tensions regarding mixed religions the family moved to Stourbridge when she was five.

Educated at Stourbridge Girl’s High School, followed by a teaching course in French and Education at City of Leeds and Carnegie College, Leeds. At school Carol won several creative writing contests and always wanted to be a writer. At college she retained a keen an interest in The Black Country – and her 20,000 word English Thesis was entitled, ‘The Black Country, as Portrayed by Traditional Songs and Poetry.’

Carol moved back down to Stourbridge in 1976 to marry John and settled in Wollaston. She started teaching at Willingsworth High School, Tipton in 1976 and remained there until 1989 when she left the profession to jointly run a pub in Upper Gornal with John. This was The Old Mill and was the original setting for her Edna and Arthur poems. The inspiration came from the colourful assortment of clientele and many of the customers often commented that they could see a bit of themselves in either Edna or Arthur.

In 1993 John and Carol decided to return to their professional lives and sold the business before returning to Stourbridge, where they still live with an assortment of animals! To date, as well as the E & A poems, Carol has written over two hundred poems, numerous short stories and six full length novels. Some of her stories have been published in women’s magazines and she has written articles for Reader’s Digest and The Black Country Bugle. She have also won a few writing competitions in Writers’ News magazine. In October 2007 she appeared on The Weakest Link, winning it!

Today Carol teaches French at Redhill School, Stourbridge – which used to be Stourbridge Girl’s High School.  Edna and Arthur was published by the Kates Hill Press in 2005.  A series of short stories based on the songs of Jon Raven, The Bawdy Bloody Black Country appeared in 2007.