Ian has thirty years of experience in further and higher education, having taught on a range of programmes including Creative Writing at Lancaster University and the University of Cumbria. He is also an experienced hillwalker and has a Mountain Leader's Award.
His first short story was published in 1998 and since then he's had a play performed professionally and won a poetry prize as part of his MA in Creative Writing at St Martin’s College. An edition of Dream Catcher magazine included his short story Moving On.
He has a PhD in Creative Writing from Lancaster University which spawned (amongst other things) the Northumbrian Westerns - the first novel, Burnt Horizon came out in 2015. The second novel, Blighted Land, was published in 2016. He is a member of a select writers’ group in Kendal, who have all published stories and poems. He has recently had a poem published in Streetcake Literary Magazine and occasionally he reads some of his poetry at the Brewery Arts Centre.