Carol Atherton read English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, before training to be a teacher. She is currently Head of English at a secondary school in Lincolnshire. She has written for the British Library, the Poetry Archive, and various other subject-related organisations, and is co-author of Teaching English Literature 16-19, a major study of English in post-compulsory education.

She blogs about issues related to English teaching at www.passing-it-on.com. Her first book, Reading Lessons, will be published by Fig Tree in 2024.