Cheryl Mayo writes under the pen name Cheryl Burman. She moved to the Forest of Dean in 2008 and doesn’t plan on leaving. She first put pen to paper following the Hands Off Our Forest (HOOF) campaign, which inspired Guardians of the Forest, her trilogy for youngsters (although Mum, Dad and the grans love them too). In 2021 she released Keepers, women’s fiction set in the 1950s in her home country of Australia. River Witch, a magical realism novel released in Sept 2022, returns her readers to the Forest and to the Severn, which the protagonist knows as Sabrina, goddess.
Her flash fiction and short stories have won awards, and some are included in anthologies such as GWN’s Signposts and the most recent Stroud Short Stories volume as well as in her slim collection, Dragon Gift.
As Cheryl Mayo, she is the chair of Dean Writers Circle and a founder of Dean Scribblers, which encourages creative writing among young people in the community.