In July 2003, with a story called `Inside Ella Fitzgerald', Sally Brown won the Harpers and Queen short story competition run in conjunction with the Orange Prize for Fiction. Sally is working on her first novel.

Writing is Sally's third successful career. Sally first trained as a fine artist, with a BA (hons) and MA from what was then Newcastle Polytechnic. Living in Newcastle for over twenty years, she worked as an sculptor, mosaic artist, trades union banner-maker and silkscreen printer, working both to commission and on projects housing estates in the most deprived areas of Tyneside, pioneering community arts work there in the 1970s. In 1986 she undertook a six-month artist's residency with the Northern Sinfonia Orchestra, and in 1989 completed a research project in West Africa as a Winston Churchill Fellow.

After more than ten years of playing in bands, in the mid-eighties, Sally also decided to study music more formally and spent two years at Newcastle School of Music. Thus commenced her second career, as a musician.

In the early 1990s Sally fronted and sang with her own swing and jump-jive band called Pearl and the Dogs, playing both violin and double bass. For five years the band performed at major venues across the UK and Ireland.

In 1995 she moved to Lincolnshire, invited to work there to set up music projects. During this time she organised the Fulbeck Fiddle Festival, the first event of its kind in this country to present a mixed programme of international violin music.

Sally Brown is also the founding musical director of seven world and historic music choirs based in the East Midlands. She teaches `by ear' in the traditional way. She writes, researches and arranges new material for choirs.

The Out of Silence choir's first project was inspired by 17th century song manuscripts Sally `discovered' in a National Trust property. Leader of the Northern Sinfonia Orchestra, Bradley Creswick, collaborated as the solo violinist for six regional performances and the recording of a CD, featured on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour in August 2001. Now known as the National Trust Out of Silence Choir, the singers are currently working with Sally on a year-long song-cycle based on three National Trust properties, Clumber Park, near Worksop; The Workhouse at Southwell and Sudbury Hall in Derbyshire (funded by the National Trust, Lottery `Arts for All' and the Arts Council of England). Woman's Hour have subsequently made a further two broadcasts on `Out of Silence'.