Barton was born in and grew up in the village of
Newburgh in
Lancashire, and was educated at
Winstanley College and read for an English degree at
Worcester College, Oxford. Following graduation, she began writing for
The Guardian from 2000 specialising in writing features. She has also written for
Q magazine,
The Word, and
Intelligent Life, and broadcast on
BBC Radio 4. Much of her writing relates to
rock and
pop music, and until late 2011 she wrote a fortnightly column about music for
The Guardians Film and Music supplement, called "Hail, Hail, Rock and Roll", as well as a weekly column on women's issues for the newspaper's
G2 supplement, called "The View from a Broad". Her novel,
Twenty-One Locks (2010), recounts the story of "a young small-town girl facing the biggest decision of her life."
Carol Birch, reviewing it in
The Independent, said "Too much grim-up-north trowel-laying mars Laura Barton's otherwise promising first novel. ... Wonderful writing - but it's hard to engage with such a passively selfish central character." Also in the Independent Rob Sharp wrote "When she lets her words flow they become rhythmic; most of them, however, are painstakingly chiselled." and finishes "I look forward to Barton's second [book]." Rosamund Urwin of Evening Standard says "But while well-rendered, the book feels light on ideas. Twenty-One Locks could have been a short story rather than a novel." Barton worked with photographer Sarah Lee on a photo-essay
West of West: Travels along the edge of America, which was published by
Unbound (2020, ) and featured in
The Guardian and
The New York Review of Books. Her memoir
Sad Songs is to be published by
Quercus books under its riverrun imprint on 1 May 2025 (). She made a three-part series
Notes on Music for
BBC Radio 4 in 2021, discussing the ages of seventeen in music, "happy sad songs", and
Bruce Springsteen. Barton has said she is working on a second novel and a non-fiction book about music. She subsequently divorced. ==References==