Clarice Hackett

Born in Blackheath in 1920, Clarice Hackett left school at 14 and went to work at an office in Birmingham.  She left there to join BTH in Blackheath, working on the teleprinter that was connected to head office in Rugby – electronic communication in the 1930s!  She moved on to be a Dictaphone typist in Halesowen then a telephonist and typist at a timber yard on the Wolverhampton Road.  While there the war broke out prompting the Liverpudlian owners to relocate to Hagley.  Clarice opted to stay in the Black Country, working at Accles and Pollock and then Stewart and Lloyds.  Clarice married and brought up 4 children.  She took up writing in earnest upon retiring, contributing regularly to the Quinton and Halesowen News before going on to write the Petticoat Page in the early years of the Black Country Bugle.  She was for many years a leading light in Dudley Writer’s Circle and has contributed to many Black Country writers’ groups. Clarice Hackett published a volume of short stories under the name of Annie Old Iron and a recipe book to raise funds for leukaemia research.

She has made numerous appearances on Carl Chinn’s radio show. The Sportsman was published by the Kates Hill Press in 1996.  This was followed by Stories of the Old Black Country and Reflections (2001) and Stories of the Old Black Country Volume 2 and More Reflections (2002). Her second novel The Hairy Mouse will be published in 2004.  She has written her autobiography, excerpts of which have appeared on the website rowleyregis.com.  In her later years she worked on a historical novel called The Flight From Worcester set in the English civil war and her autobiography.  Clarice died in August 2006.

Born in Dudley in 1955. A chequered career has seen Stokes ride shotgun for Dudley Co-op, work bars on Dudley Zoo, train as a clinical chemist in Birmingham and ultimately develop and run a specialist unit in Abu Dhabi, which investigated infertility. His return to the UK in 1985 held tragedy round the corner as his father was murdered in the aftermath of the bombing of Libya by the US. Stokes would go on to describe this in “A Witness For Peace” (1994) In 1988 Stokes retrained as a social worker on Wearside and worked through the grades to manage a busy children’s centre in Sandwell before switching to community social work in Walsall in 1994 where he handled complex child protection cases. Stokes began writing while in Leicester in the early 1980s, and has written several novels, over 200 short stories, and a travelogue as well as “A Witness For Peace”. With Barry Morris he developed a training program for workers helping families bereaved through murder.

He has appeared on BBC Two’s Split Screen discussing media intrusion, in a BBC One documentary about the life of Lenny Henry, in a clip for the BBC Four quiz show Never Mind The Full Stops, the BBC Two programme The Comedy Map of Britain and in Lenny’s Britain (BBC One).  He has made numerous appearances on Carl Chinn’s radio show.  Other radio credits include Saul Abner’s show on WCR and Jimmy Franks on WM.  He was also involved in the BBC Voices project, representing the Black Country with Billy Spakemon, Brendan Hawthorne, and Gary O’Dea. In 2005 Stokes began live performances of his fiction at the Alternative Black Country Night Out put on by the Creative Co-operative of which he was a founder member along with Billy Spakemon and Gary O’Dea.  A second co-op, RoosterKateSpake, was formed when Stokes and Billy Spakemon were joined by Laurence Hipkiss to promote spoken word performance in Dudley.  This ran until January 2007 when Stokes left to produce the Alternative Black Country Revue with Lydon Evetts (April/May 2007) and to pave the way for the Kates Hill Press to produce Live Literature events in its own right.

Stokes returned to lab work 2003 and worked at City Hospital and then Birmingham Children’s Hospital.  He lives in Dudley with his partner Anne. Black Country Stories and Sketches (1992), “A Witness For Peace” (1994), Tried by Prejudice (1999), The Gulf (2004), A Pack of Saftness (2004), Second City Stories (2006), Brierley Hills Cop(2008) American Toilet Tissue & Schroedinger’s Pussy (2011) and Last Virion Standing (2106) have been published by the Kates Hill Press.  An Audio Book The Grant featuring two of his short stories was produced in association with Roosters Studio in 2005. A second audio book Doctor, which included performances by Louise Stokes and Brendan Hawthorne, was produced in association with Poetry Wednesbury in 2007. These were replaced by recordings with Black Country Theatre with whom a third CD, Snowman II was recorded in 2017. Stokes retired in 2013 following a second round of treatment for Hepatitis C. His most recent work is Last Virion Standing – A journey to, through and beyond hepatitis C which celebrates living a full life with the disease and surviving the trials of treatment. He is currently working on In Search of Tadoyashisan which chronicles his long trip on the Trans Siberian Railway and on through Mongolia and China to Japan where he sought out Tadoyashi Suzuki for whom he did an English class in Tokyo in 1983.