S.F. Bailey divides her time between freelance social-work, writing and work as Associate Lecturer in Creative Writing on the undergraduate degree-course at Bath Spa University. She also holds a First Class Honours Degree in Creative Writing awarded by the same university, where she was taught by award-winning children's author, David Almond among others. She wrote Snow Foal during this course and it then went on to be shortlisted for the Joan Aitken Future Classics Prize.