Biography
Mason-John spent her childhood ‘in care,’ i.e. in foster homes and childcare facilities, including the Barnardo's Orphanages in Britain with the exception of a short time spent living with her mother in her early teens. She dropped out before receiving her undergraduate degree in the eighties, but has continued to pursue post-graduate education and training into the present. Since the early nineties, Queenie has worked as a writer, performing artist and lecturer. More recently, Mason-John received a teaching certificate, and currently conducts seminars in anger management and conflict resolution.
After eighteen months of study in philosophy and politics at Leeds University during the nineteen-eighties, Mason-John studied post graduate journalism, earned an MFA in creative writing and diploma in theatrical performance at institutions such as Sussex University and The Desmond Jones School. By 2003, her interest in counseling and her ordination into the Western Buddhist Order led her to, in addition to writing and performing, focus on training herself and others in anger management and conflict resolution. In December, 2007, Mason-John was named Honorary Doctor of Letters by The University of East London. Mason John continues to write, work as a self-awareness trainer; she performs and lectures internationally.
Read more about this topic: Valerie Mason-John
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
—James Boswell (1740–95)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)
“The death of Irving, which at any other time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, went almost unobserved. I shall have to read of it in the biography of authors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)