{"id":215364,"date":"2025-06-26T08:04:13","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T08:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/215364\/"},"modified":"2025-06-26T08:04:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T08:04:13","slug":"wendy-erskine-why-this-belfast-teacher-didnt-start-writing-until-she-was-in-her-50s-and-why-that-was-perfect-timing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/215364\/","title":{"rendered":"Wendy Erskine: Why this Belfast teacher didn\u2019t start writing until she was in her 50s \u2013 and why that was perfect timing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-91174671_secondary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom4 beltel-1d70522a_marginleft0 beltel-1d70522a_marginright0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">In our Meaning of Life series, teacher and author Wendy Erskine speaks to Laura McDaid about the overall creative process, both in storytelling and within the classroom, her debut novel, and some small-scale regrets\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Wendy Erskine\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/33e4cb98-3341-434b-ad3d-bb1012661dde.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_caption1 beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_secondary beltel-66f0fec7_regular beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_marginleft0 beltel-1d70522a_marginright0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop3 beltel-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Wendy Erskine<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Belfast author and English teacher Wendy Erskine was the first person in her family to go to university. So after graduating with a first-class honours degree with awards for her academic work, any outsider looking in on her life might have expected her to be flying high on the wings of youthful success.<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">But this was one of the most difficult times in her life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In our Meaning of Life series, teacher and author Wendy Erskine speaks to Laura McDaid about the overall&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215365,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3938],"tags":[2378,3444,77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-215364","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-belfast","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114748631577926330","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}