Maggie Bennett was born in Hampshire. She left school at eighteen and started general nursing training and, after a year as a staff nurse, she went on to train as a midwife. She married at thirty-five, and moved to Manchester where her two daughters were born; she later returned to work as a midwife until her retirement in 1991. She took a correspondence course in creative writing after her husband's death in 1983, and started writing articles and short stories.