Since September 2022, Jane Wilson-Howarth has been the FRRL W-I-R, our fourth.
Her main role is to encourage and support local writers and to act as community ambassador for FRRL – representing FRRL at local events, promoting its aims and encouraging new members – contact her directly if you would like advice on your own writing: wilson.howarth@virgin.net
For the 2023 Members’ Christmas Social Event, Jane penned a special poem celebrating Rock Road Library and the work of its Friends: W-I-R Christmas Ode 2023
Jane Wilson-Howarth didn’t find school easy and didn’t even really start reading fiction until she was 25 because she is mildly dyslexic. This perhaps is why she’s especially keen to encourage others to read and also write; both are enriching and broadening and open many doors.
Thus far Jane has nine books published; her best seller is about poo and pooing and has a title too rude to mention. She is a retired GP (having worked in Mill Road for around 15 years) and used her medical knowledge to write three travel health guides, including one initially called Bugs Bites & Bowels. She’s also published two travel narratives, one set in Madagascar and the other in Nepal and she has four novels out. These are also set in Nepal; one is for adults and three for middle grade readers. She’s written over two hundred features on travel health for the glossy magazine Wanderlust and has also has innumerable articles published in national newspapers, Which? Travel and elsewhere. Recently she was named as one of the most impressive travel authorities by Simon Calder of the Independent.
She was fortunate in being able to use time during lockdown to record an audio version of her memoir A Glimpse of Eternal Snows and has also just launched an audio of her third Nepal adventure, Himalayan Heist.
Before medical school (in Southampton) she studied zoology (at Plymouth) and parasitology (in Oxford) and is passionate about natural history and conservation. She likes to weave wildlife into her writing when she can, as well as tales of daring do, recreated from her early explorations of caves, from cave-diving, various water sports and her treks and expeditions in the Andes and Himalayas.
Jane moved to Cambridge in 1988 and all three of her sons are Addenbrooke’s babies. For more than 30 years, her family base has been little more than a stone’s throw from the library and she feels honoured to serve as Rock Road Library’s fourth Writer-in-Residence.
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