Vicky Ellaway-Barnard lives in Cambridgeshire with her husband, toddler and antisocial cat. She had an epiphany aged roughly fourteen that she wanted to be a travel writer, and somehow that sent her down the path of becoming a Geography teacher.

After teaching at a secondary school in Hertfordshire for five years, she shifted sectors and worked at a national youth charity, moving from operations into strategy. Rather than taking the logical next step and managing the charity’s business delivery, though, she decided to have a child, completely upend her world and take a career break to manage fictional worlds instead.

Towards the end of 2025, Vicky started submitting her short stories to competitions and has been shortlisted or placed in several national competitions. She’s now working on her third novel through The Novelry which asks the question: who do we become as we age?