Felicity Keats-Morrison has a B.Com, and UED. Her brief teaching career ended with the desire to write professionally. This she has been doing for nearly fifty years, intermittently, as a freelance journalist, short story writer, editor of South Africa’s Beekeeping journal, and more recently (since 1988) as a children’s author, and in writing books dealing with the unearthing of the talents of the right brain.
In 1992 she began teaching writing, using all her knowledge and further designing a powerful lateral right brain teaching course that cut out the usual academics of the left brain and got people writing publishable work almost immediately.
Because of the need for her pupils to have a platform from which to be “heard”, she started a publishing company, umSinsi Press cc, in 1995. The number of published titles grew, from three in the first year, to a total of over 1 200 titles thirteen years later. In 1998 she started a rural literacy project, using a specially registered cc for the purpose.
Five corporates assisted with five print runs of books in 2000 and 3000 print runs which went to disadvantaged rural schools without reading material.
In 2002 she started to “skills transfer” her knowledge in the form of compressed “mentor” courses which take place over three days. Two and a half years ago, the concept of writing clubs was established, with the outcome being anthologies published annually, as well as some individual work from clubs Felicity is also publishing for Education departments under their trained mentors. This has resulted in the spread of good writing in many parts of South Africa, leading to better school passes and better job opportunities.
Felicity has personally trained more than 1000 mentors, each training taking a full two to three days, and has worked in all nine provinces of South Africa, training education specialists, curriculum implementers, district officials, provincial education department officials, and educators, to use non judgmental non critical methods of helping children to read and write publishable work and so rapidly increase literacy levels, even in the deepest rural areas.
In 2011 she was granted a Living Legends Award by the eThekwini Municipality for Academics and Services rendered nationally
Felicity also enjoys watercolour painting and photography as a hobby.
