ABOUT US
David Mason grew up in the north west of England at a time where there were always kids out playing on the streets and in the parks. He loved playing football, golf and tennis as well as Block 1-2-3, British Bulldog and numerous other street games. He also loved writing music, singing and writing stories. He played in a band with his brother and friend. His brother went on to carve a career in the music production industry and the friend went on to be the lead guitarist in a world famous Australian rock band!
David went on to study Food and Nutrition at Nottingham University and then to gain a Biology degree from Manchester University. He worked in immunopathology before joining Glaxo Pharmaceuticals where he rose to the dizzy heights of sales training manager: His inspiring teaching skills were already apparent.
In 1992 he left the corporate world to set up his own restaurant in the Norfolk Broads. This enabled him to indulge his passion for cooking healthy food from fresh ingredients and developing his own fusion cuisine. It also gave him the time and headspace to take up his pen and write poetry that he self-published in books to sell from the restaurant. He also organised food and poetry evenings in the local area.
One thing led to another and he was asked to visit local schools to perform poetry in his animated and inimitable style and to teach young people to develop their own creative writing. As a father himself, he found it easy to switch to writing for children and his career in schools took off. In 2000, it became apparent that the time to sell the restaurant had come. David found his calling in using his successful teaching methods to work full time in schools and writing more poetry and fiction: Inspire To Write was born!
Since then, David has worked all over the UK and in several international schools. He loves travel and has combined touring in his motorhome with teaching at international schools in Spain. He has tailored the focus of his work to suit the needs of schools as curriculum changes have made more and more demands on teaching staff. He is very familiar with the content of the curriculum and his fluency enables schools to tick boxes at the same time as the pupils enjoy an active, interactive and enjoyable creative experience. He has visited some schools many times and set up Writer in Residence projects that extend over several years.
His wife, Helen, is the IT wing of the business. She runs the day-to-day administration and bookings, the website, emails, social media. As David writes all his work longhand, she types up and creates the books that they publish through their publishing imprint, North Street Publishing, as well as digitally on Amazon. For the last few years, she has also digitally illustrated many of the poetry books they have created. These range from children’s poetry and fiction to adult poetry with some non-fiction on teaching creative writing through drama in-between.