Wednesday 5th May

Kathryn Koromilas is a creative writer, a teacher & a gentle, joyful Stoic! She uses ancient wisdom and writing practices to help reignite creativity, reimagine purpose, and foster a thriving writing practice.

Alexandra Christo

Alexandra Christo decided to write books when she was four and her teacher told her she couldn't be a fairy. Her debut novel To Kill a Kingdom is an international bestseller and her Young Adult fantasy books have been translated into over a dozen languages worldwide. Twitter: @alliechristo

Ciannon Smart

Of Jamaican heritage, Ciannon Smart grew up in a small town in the south-east of England. She loves her heroines exactly as she loves her villains: wilful, wily, and unpredictable. Her debut novel, Witches Steeped in Gold, was published in April.

Holly Race

Holly wrote her debut novel, urban fantasy Midnight’s Twins, as part of the Faber Academy course. It was published in summer 2020 during lockdown. The sequel, A Gathering Midnight, will be released in June 2021.

Kat Ellis

Kat Ellis is the author of young adult thrillers including Harrow Lake, Purge, Breaker, and Blackfin Sky, as well as a novella within the Three Strikes collection titled The Twins of Blackfin. Her fifth novel, Wicked Little Deeds, will be published in August by Penguin Random House Children’s.

Matt Killeen

Matt Killeen’s first novel Orphan Monster Spy was shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards and the Branford Boase Award, as well as winning the 2019 SCBWI Crystal Kite. The sequel, Devil Darling Spy, was published in spring 2020, just as the world ended.

Yasmin Rahman

Yasmin Rahman is a British Muslim born and raised in Hertfordshire. Her first novel, All The Things We Never Said, was the runner-up YA book in the inaugural Diversity Book Awards. This Is My Truth will be publishing in July 2021.

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Jill Abram

Jill Abram is Director of Malika's Poetry Kitchen, a collective encouraging craft, community and development. Publications include The Rialto, Magma, Under the Radar, Ink Sweat & Tears, And Other Poems, and Harana.

Deborah Alma

Deborah Alma is a UK poet and teacher. Deborah is editor of #MeToo: A Women’s Poetry Anthology. Her first full collection, Dirty Laundry, is published by Nine Arches Press and she now runs the Poetry Pharmacy in Shropshire.

Kim Moore

Kim Moore’s first collection The Art of Falling (Seren, 2015) won the 2016 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Her second collection All The Men I Never Married will be published by Seren in October 2021.

Wendy Pratt

Wendy Pratt's latest collection When I Think of My Body as a Horse won the Poetry Business Book and Pamphlet award. She is a poet, author and workshop facilitator and the creator and editor of Spelt magazine.

Victoria Bennett

Her most recent poetry pamphlet, To Start The Year From Its Quiet Centre, was published by Indigo Dreams in 2020, and is an invitation to witness to the intimate moments of dying, telling the story of a relationship between women that is transformed through grief.

Jhilmil Breckenridge

Jhilmil Breckenridge is a poet, writer and activist. She is the founder of Bhor Foundation, an Indian charity, which is active in mental health advocacy. Her debut poetry collection is Reclamation Song.

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Gillian is a Glasgow-based writer with a doctorate in Creative Writing and a background in teaching. She uses fiction to explore the world of illness and the essay form to examine hidden medical places and spaces. Her work has appeared in The Interpreter’s House literary journal, thi wurd fiction magazine, the anthology, Tales from a Cancelled Country, and the medical humanities journal, The Polyphony, amongst others. She’s led workshops that explore the way fiction writing can be used as a distraction to help manage chronic pain for Glasgow Women’s Library and The Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland.

Jacqueline Bishop

Jacqueline Bishop is an award-winning photographer, painter and writer born and raised in Jamaica, who now lives and works in New York City. Her work exhibits widely in North America, Europe and North Africa.

Ronnie McGrath

Ronnie McGrath is a writer, poet and Creative Writing Lecturer. Amongst many other things, Ronnie draws on a neo-surrealist, postmodern aesthetic to look at what ‘Blackness’ is and what it can become.

Naomi Knox

Naomi has been working as an Event Manager for Paper Nations since September 2020. Most recently, she managed the Follow the Sun Conference - an international online writing summit. She is also an actor and writer particularly interested in bringing the two together as performance poetry.

Terri White, Writer

Terri White is a writer, broadcaster and the Editor-in-Chief of Empire magazine, for which she was named Entertainment Magazine Editor of the Year (British Society of Magazine Editors). She previously edited some of the biggest publications in the UK and US, including Time Out New York and ShortList, and has also written for the Guardian, Grazia and the Big Issue.

Margie Orford, Chair

Margie Orford is an internationally acclaimed writer, best known for her Clare Hart novels including, most recently, Water Music (2013). She is also an award-winning journalist, who writes regularly about crime, gender violence, politics and freedom of expression, and literature. She is also the patron of Rape Crisis, a member of the executive board of PEN International, the president of PEN South Africa and of the children’s book charity, the Little Hands Trust.

Louise Fein

Louise Fein is the author of People Like Us, which has been published in thirteen territories, was longlisted for the Not The Booker Prize 2020 and shortlisted for the RNA Historical Novel of the Year award 2021. Her second novel, The Hidden Child will be published later this year.

Frances Quinn

Frances Quinn grew up in Forest Gate, East London, and studied English Literature at King’s College Cambridge. Her debut novel is The Smallest Man, about a boy who becomes a ‘court dwarf’ at the time of Charles I.

Louise Hare

Louise Hare is a London-based writer and has an MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck, University of London. Originally from Warrington, the capital is the inspiration for much of her work, including This Lovely City, which began life after a trip into the deep level shelter below Clapham Common.

Caroline Bishop

Caroline Bishop is a British freelance writer currently living in Switzerland. She has written for many publications, including, The Guardian, The Telegraph, and The Independent. The Other Daughter is her debut novel.

Polly Crosby

Polly Crosby’s debut novel, The Illustrated Child, is a dark, coming of age story set in the twentieth century, about a young girl immortalised in her father’s ‘Treasure Hunt’ picture books. Polly’s second novel, The Unravelling, will be published in hardback in September.

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