Phil Earle –Being Scared. Being Angry. Being Alone. Being Billy.

Scottish Book Trust in collaboration with NHS Lothian were very excited to bring debut author Phil Earle into Ross High School and Drummond Community High School to talk about Phil’s hard-hitting novel, Being Billy as part of the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival.

Being Billy is primarily set in a foster home and tells the story of Billy who has had an abusive past and is struggling to cope with his own anger and abandonment issues. Billy also has to try and cope with the re-introduction of his mother into his life and subsequent re-housing of his twin brother and sister who he dotes on. Poignant, moving and emotive the book is a tremendous read and will engage a teenage audience.

Author Biography

Phil Earle was born in the great city of Hull in 1974, and spent the next eighteen years playing a lot of sport, messing around in plays and trying to sing in bands.

After studying English Literature and Drama at university his first job was as a care worker in a residential kids’ home, and it was this experience that influenced the writing of Being Billy. He then trained to be a drama-therapist and worked in a therapeutic unit in South London, trying

to help kids who had been seriously damaged in their short lives. After a move into bookselling Phil was coerced into the Kids’ department of Ottaker’s and he has never looked back. He became immersed in children’s fiction and started writing in his lunchtime on a knackered old laptop in the basement of Ottaker’s.

Since then he has moved into Children’s Publishing at Random House and now Simon and Schuster Children’s Books, he spends his time at work talking about kids’ books and all his free time writing them.

You can find out more about Phil Earle on his brilliant website www.philearle.com/.

Watch an interview between Phil Earle and Rachel King (NHS Lothian) following our events with Phil.

NHS Lothian

NHS Lothian provides a comprehensive range of primary, community-based and acute hospital services for the second largest residential population in Scotland.