Elen Sentier

My mother's mother was a witch from the Isle of Mann, and my father was a somewhat reluctant shaman and engineer. One of my uncles was a gardener who talked to his plants and did lots of biodynamic-like things, and another uncle was a farmer who could talk with animals. I’ve seen him call a wild hawk to his wrist and, many times, sat all night by his side under a tree watching foxes and dormice, weasels and rabbits, badgers and hunting owls, and all the other night denizens of the wild woods. So I grew up in an environment full of everyday magic. I've been a science fiction fan since I was a child, and started writing seriously about 7 years ago. I blame Roger Zelazny, Ursula le Guin and Terri Windling mostly for this change in career J. Other favourites include Jack Vance. Ray Bradbury, Mary Gentle, George R R Martin, C J Cherryh, Tanith Lee, Anne McCaffrey and Sherri Tepper. My favourite poets are TS Eliot, Ted Hughes (a modern British shaman as well as our last poet laureate), Tom Gunn, Sylvia Plath and the Liverpool Poets. Musically I adore the Stones, Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, Cream, jazz, blues, reggae and R&B. On the other side I love Mozart, Beethoven (especially the quartets), Ravel, Mussorgsky, Prokofiev and many others. I love mediaeval music too, troubadours but not plainsong! Breton pipe and drum music always gets me going as well. I’ve a very catholic taste J. I now write full time, but have had various incarnations. My background is in education; a diploma in education from Exeter University where I studied Rudolph Laban and Martha Graham dance techniques. I went from there to the other end of the scale to work at the Ministry of Defence in London. I was the project manager in charge of the software design team which built the Defence Sales system. Prior to that, I was a finance officer for building the new fighter-trainer aircraft. I left the Civil Service to become a transpersonal and shamanic dream counsellor after training with Ian Gordon-Brown and Barbara Somers. I worked with Caitlin & John Matthews on Celtic shamanism, and C Maxwell Cade in the 1970s on biofeedback. I also worked on Dowsing, Earth Energies and Fountain International with Colin Bloy, Hamish Miller, Tom Graves and Michael Poynder, and Paul Devereux on the Dragon Project. My family were very much involved with the Theosophical Society. My grandmother's cousin, on my father’s side, was Esther Bright, the confidante of Annie Besant, who wrote "Old Memories & Letters of Dr Annie Besant". Esther's mother, Ursula Bright, bought the Benares Centre for the Society. They also knew Rudolph Steiner who founded the Biodynamic agriculture movement and I continue this, as a member of the BDAA, in my own garden and building show gardens for Weleda (UK) Ltd at the RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show in 2004/5/6. I sometimes lecture at BDAA conferences and give workshops in biodynamic gardening. In 1999, I founded the Rainbow Warriors school of Celtic shamanism which has students from countries all over the world. It’s a 3-year advanced course in shamanic practice from a Celtic perspective. In 2004 I started the Owl Woman courses which offer a set of workshops in basic Celtic shamanism and a more advanced course in shamanic healing. I live in the Golden Valley, in the Black Mountains of the Welsh Marches, and am working on my next novel Caergollo (a reworking of the Tristan/Isoldé story set in 2003/4), a book on shamanic healing for Capall Bann and Biodynamics for Gardeners for Timber Press. Numerology: the Spiral Path (Capall Bann) came out in early 2006.