David Armstrong
 David was born in Birmingham and now lives in Shropshire. He left secondary school without qualifications but later went on to read English at university in Cardiff. His first novel Night's Black Agents (HarperCollins) was short-listed for the Crime Writers' Association Best First Crime Novel. His subsequent four crime novels (Less Than Kind, Until Dawn Tomorrow, Thought for the Day, & Small Vices) have all  continued to receive critical acclaim.
David is a course tutor at the prestigious Arvon Foundation, where he has specialised in teaching courses on crime fiction.
He is also the author of How Not to Write a Novel - a more realistic guide to the life and career of a novelist than those books which focus on a handful of bestselling authors.
Sophia Bartleet
 
Sophia has been the Tutor in Creative Writing at Oxford Brookes University School of Publishing for the last five years, teaching courses in children's fiction and crime fiction, with workshops on plotting, character development, research, drafting, sense of place, and avoiding clichés.
Writing as Sophia Creswell, she has published two novels with Sceptre. Her first, Sam Golod, 1996, was set in the anarchic underbelly of modern Russia. The Observer wrote "Sophia Creswell has caught well both Russia's atmosphere of seedy violence and the mild hysteria of its artistic coteries." Her second book, Red Tape, 1998, charts a love affair doomed to failure by the pressures of the asylum and immigration system. In 1997 she won the Southern Arts Literary Award. Read more about Sophia's books
Cat Bauer
 
Cat started out as an actress and playwright, and had several plays produced in the local Los Angeles theatre scene before turning to fiction. Her first novel, Harley, Like a Person, was called "Compelling," by the Horn Book Magazine, and has received the following awards and recognitions:
• Booklist Top Ten Youth First Novel •
American Library Association YALSA Best Book for Young Adults • Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers • Popular Paperback for Young Adults (Two-time winner 2001 & 2008) • New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age • BookSense 76 Pick • Bookreporter Top Ten Teen First Novel • Book of the Year - First Place YA Fiction - ForeWord Magazine • Oregon Young Adult Network Book Rave • teenreads.com Top 10 • CosmoGirl Book Club Selection • Teen People Book Club Selection • Winner - SCBWI Sue Alexander Most Promising New Work Award
She has been a regular contributor for the International Herald Tribune's Italian supplement, Italy Daily, writing about the art, culture and history of Venice, Italy, where she has lived since 1998. In 2007, Knopf republished Harley, Like a Person, together with a companion novel entitled, Harley's Ninth. She is currently working actively on new projects. For more information please visit her website or her blog.
Tim Binding
  Tim was born in Germany in 1947. Tim has had a stellar career in publishing, working as an Editorial Director of Picador, then Chief Editor of Fiction at Penguin. He has also been a part-time commissioning editor at Simon & Schuster. During this time, Tim has worked with many of the most famous names in British and American fiction.
Tim is also the author of a number of novels, In the Kingdom of Air (1993), A Perfect Execution (1996) (shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize) and Island Madness (1998), set on Guernsey during the Second World War.
He co-wrote a comedy drama series for BBC television in 1998, entitled The Last Salute. On Ilkley Moor: The Story of an English Town (2001), is a memoir and history of the area where he grew up. Anthem, a moving and entertaining story of the horror of war and its consequences, was published in 2003. His latest novel, Man Overboard (2005), tells the story of English war hero, Commander Crann.
Tim lives in Kent with his wife and daughter.
Richard Blandford
  Richard is the author of Hound Dog (Jonathan Cape), described as “’Phoenix Nights’ meets America Psycho. In Cambridge’ by Kevin Sampson, author of Powder. Hound Dog is a novel of redemption and rock’n’roll, masturbation and morality. The Observer has described it as “Slick, efficient and faintly nasty, this novel croons indie Brit-flick.” The TV rights to Hound Dog have been sold to GRD Productions.
Richard's second novel will be Flying Saucer Rock and Roll, (Cape, 2008). Richard is thirty one years old and lives in Brighton.
Keith Brooke
 Keith has written five science fiction novels under his own name, including the much-praised Genetopia, of which a review in Locus magazine commented, 'Beyond any facile summary, a minor masterpiece that should usher Brooke at last into the recognised front rank of SF writers.' Keith has also published two volumes of short stories, much other short fiction, and has edited three SF anthologies. He also created and now runs the infinityplus website, which is Britain's premier website for SF / fantasy / horror fans.
Keith also finds time to write horror stories for teenagers under the name Nick Gifford, and has been selected by the Waterstones Book Quarterly as one of the faces of the future.
Rebecca Connell
  Rebecca is 29 years old and lives in south London. She is a writer of literary fiction, and her first novel, The Art of Losing, will be published by Fourth Estate (HarperCollins) in March 2009. Rebecca graduated from Oxford University, where she read English Language and Literature, in 2001. She has worked as an agent's assistant, and also worked in television for several years, devising and writing treatments for major television production companies. She now works as a researcher and writer of articles and reports dealing with aspects of youth culture and lifestyle.
Karen Connelly
  Karen is the author of seven books of best-selling nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, the most recent being The Border Surrounds Us. She has read from and lectured on her work in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. She is also a working photographer.
Her best-selling book, Touch The Dragon, A Thai Journal, won the Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction in 1993, and was a New York Times Notable Travel Book of the Year in 2002. Her new novel The Lizard Cage illuminates the tragic story of modern Burma, a deeply layered work about the transforming power of language and of love.
Her other books include Grace and Poison, One Room in a Castle, This Brighter Prison, The Disorder of Love, and The Small Words in My Body.
Dean Vincent Carter
 Dean has written two novels for young adults. He began writing short stories at the age of fourteen. After graduating from Thames Valley University with a degree in English and Media Studies, he worked in sales and as a bookseller before getting a job in the facilities department at Transworld Publishers and Random House Children's Books. His writing talent was spotted by his editor after she read his company-wide emails.
His first novel, The Hand of the Devil was published in 2006 to great critical acclaim. He lives in Hounslow, Middlesex.
Emma Darwin
 
Emma’s debut novel The Mathematics of Love was published in 2006. The Times described it as: “that rare thing, a book that works on every conceivable level. A real achievement”, and it was was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers and Goss First Novel awards, longlisted for the Prince Maurice Prize and the RNA Novel of the Year, and has been translated into many languages. Emma’s bestselling second novel, A Secret Alchemy, was published in 2008; the Daily Mail acclaimed it as “powerful and utterly convincing”, and The Times as one of their 50 Best Paperbacks of 2009.
Emma is an Associate Lecturer in Creative Writing with the Open University and has a PhD in Creative Writing, in which she explored the writing of historical fiction. Her short fiction has been published and broadcast, and she teaches workshops and one-day courses. Emma was born in London and still lives there, after interludes in Manhattan and Brussels..
Susan Davis
 
Susan was seven when she wrote her first novel, which was lovingly illustrated and bound with scarlet knitting wool. Since then, she’s upped her game. Her debut novel, The Henry Game (Random House 2002, and an Ottakars Book of the Month) tells the story of three girls who accidentally summon up the spirit of Henry VIII. The sequel, Delilah and the Dark Stuff, came out in 2003. Mad, Bad and Dangerous came out in 2005.
Susan's short fiction has been short-listed for the Asham Award and won many other prizes. She has also been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Susan is an Arvon tutor and literary mentor.
Helena Drysdale
  Helena is the author of five works of 'creative non-fiction':
Alone through China and Tibet (Constable 1986), Dancing with the Dead (Hamish Hamilton 1991), Looking for George, (Picador, 1996), and Mother Tongues (Picador, 2001). Her most recent book, Strangerland, was published by Picador in 2006.
Looking for George was shortlisted for both the Esquire/Waterstones/Apple Non-fiction award (1995) and the PEN/JRAckerley Award for Autobiography in the same year. Helena has also written and presented a documentary, Dancing with the Dead, for Granada TV. She makes regular appearances as a broadcaster and lecturer. She is a course tutor for the Arvon Foundation, and a Royal Literary Fellow teaching writing skills at Exeter University.
Helena is married to painter Richard Pomeroy and they live in Somerset with their two daughters.
Clare Dudman
 
Clare has a PhD in chemistry and a diploma in religious philosophy. She has been a research scientist in academia and industry, a teacher, and a lecturer in colleges and universities in both chemistry and creative writing.
She has written four novels: one for children, Edge of Danger (Penguin, 1995) which won the Kathleen Fidler award, and three for adults: Wegener’s Jigsaw (Sceptre, 2003)/One Day the Ice Will Reveal All its Dead (Viking US, 2004, Deilmann, 2008); 98 Reasons for Being (Sceptre, 2004, Viking US, 2005, AmboAnthos 2006); and A Place of Meadows and Tall Trees (Seren, 2009/2010). An excerpt from Wegener’s Jigsaw won an Arts Council of England Writers’ award, and was one of Penguin's notable books of 2004 in the US.
She has also had short stories and poetry published in several anthologies by various publishers including Serpent’s Tail and Bantam. One of her short stories won the Sheriff of Cheshire’s Prize for Literature in 2003.
To research for her books she has received Arts council and Authors' Foundation grants and has travelled alone along the coast of north-west Greenland and across the Patagonian desert. She has also trained to become a shaman in London.
Edward Fenton
 
Edward has worked as a writer and editor for over 20 years. His novel Scorched Earth won the Sinclair Prize for Fiction (judged by a panel of five Booker judges), and he has also written for BBC Radio (Radios 1, 3 and 4) and Chrysalis TV. As a script consultant he has worked on adult and children’s fiction, as well as on the libretto of an opera performed at the BBC Proms. He is currently the editor of ‘The Oxford Writer’, and runs an independent publishing company, whose titles have featured in the ‘Books of the Year’ lists of novelists Iain Sinclair and Martin Amis (among others) in several national newspapers and magazines.
Jocelyn Ferguson
 Jocelyn began her career writing for the theatre and enjoyed significant success in the field before taking up fiction. Her first novel, Rope Tricks, was published by Virago to critical acclaim. Her second novel, Tree of Sails, was published in 1996, and brought her an Arts Council Writer’s Award.
She has taught Creative Writing for at Warwick and Keele Universities, Literature at Stafford University, as well as English Literature and Drama in schools and colleges. She is currently devoting her time to fiction.
Elizabeth Garner, Chief editor, Film & TV
 Liz was born in Cheshire, grew up in the north of England and now lives in Oxford, where she works as a script editor. She is the winner of a Betty Trask Award, as well as having been shortlisted for a couple of other significant awards.
As a script editor, Liz has worked extensively in the industry. She has been on the scriptreading board of Miramax and advised them on potential novel adaptations. She was also formerly head of development at Gorgeous, an independent film company. She now works as a script editor for a number of UK-based companies.
Liz is also a successful novelist, and understands the creative process well. Her first novel Nightdancing (from Hodder Headline) was short-listed for the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award and also for the Pendleton May First Novel Award. Her second novel, Edgar Jones, is forthcoming from the same publishers.
Gary Gibson
 Gary is the author of four science fiction novels (all published by Pan Macmillan / Tor UK), with several more in the pipeline. Amongst his work is the well-regarded Shoal Sequence, including Stealing Light, Nova War and the forthcoming Empire of Light. His work fits comfortably into the 'new space opera' mould.
Occasional explorations into other media over the years have seen him publish and edit small-press comics, and he has also written a short-short comedy drama for the BBC. Although a native of Glasgow, Scotland, he currently lives in Taipei in the Far East.
Claire Gillman
  Claire is an experienced journalist, writer and broadcaster. She is the Contributing Editor to Kindred Spirit, the UK's leading mind/body/spirit magazine, as well as contributing to many other leading women's magazines and national newspapers. She has also been editor of a number of consumer and specialist women’s magazines including Health & Fitness magazine and Girl About Town.
Claire's first book, 'PARA: Inside The Parachute Regiment', was published by Bloomsbury in May 1993. Since then she has published a further seven adult health and parenting books, the most recent being Cope with Infertility for Hodder in association with This Morning TV.
She has also written seven children’s books, some under the pen-name of Rory Storm. Her latest book entitled ‘The Curious Girl’s Book of Adventure,’ was published by Elwin Street in March 2008.
Claire is married with two adolescent sons and lives on the edge of the West Pennines with her family.
Julia Hamilton
  Julia is the author of six novels, most recently Forbidden Fruits and Other People's Rules, both from HarperCollins. Before those, Julia published with Penguin (A Pillar of Society, The Good Catholic, and After Flora) and Collins / Flamingo (The Idle Hill of Summer). Other People's Rules was described by Rosamunde Pilcher as "A clever story, a really good read."
Julia grew up in Scotland, and now divides her time between London and Oxfordshire, where she lives with her husband and two daughters.
Geraldine Harris
  Geraldine is the author of five works of fantasy fiction: White Cranes Castle and the hugely acclaimed Seven Citadels tetralogy, ('Beyond question a major achievement. It cannot be said too often that this is not a children's book, however many children may ... come under its spell'' - Junior Bookshelf)
Geraldine is also an Egyptologist at Oxford University. She has published a number of academic works on the subject, as well as a number of educational books for children.
Tania Hershman
  Tania's two loves are short stories and science. A former science journalist, originally from London and now living in Israel, Tania was commended by the judges of the 2009 Orange Award for New Writers for her first short story collection, The White Road and Other Stories published by Salt Modern Fiction. Half of the stories in the collection are inspired by articles from New Scientist magazine, and the other half are "flash fiction", under 1000 words long.
Tania's short and very short stories have been published in print and online in publications including PANK magazine, Smokelong Quarterly, Drunk and Lonely Men, Eyeshot, Literary Fever, Riptide, Cafe Irreal, the Hiss Quarterly, Front&Centre, Vestal Review, Transmission, and Riffing on Strings, an anthology of fiction inspired by String Theory. She has had three stories broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Tania is the European regional winner of the 2008 Commonwealth Broadcasting Association's short story competition and joint winner of the 2008 Biscuit Publishing Flash Fiction competition. Tania's passion for short stories led her to founding The Short Review, an online journal dedicated to reviewing short story collections and anthologies. For more information about Tania, please visit her website.
Wendy Holden
  Wendy is an experienced author with fifteen books to her credit. A journalist for eighteen years, including ten with the Daily Telegraph, she has covered news events at home and abroad, including conflicts in the Middle East and Northern Ireland.
Her ghosted autobiographies, ten to date, chronicle the lives of extraordinary people, from Goldie Hawn to the only woman in the French Foreign Legion during WWII. Other works have included the novelisations The Full Monty and Waking Ned, plus Shell Shock, an investigation into the trauma of conflict. Her first novel, The Sense of Paper, is to be published in America next year. She lives in Suffolk, England, with her husband and four dogs.
Anne Horler
Anne gained her teaching qualifications at London and Cambridge Universities. While teaching she lectured to other teachers on in-service training and was on an advisory panel for the development of the Foundation Stage Curriculum. Anne has lived in Surrey and Cambridge. She worked for two years in Singapore where she met Donald Moore, a local author and publisher, and became a part-time proof-reader. Anne is married, with six grown-up children and fourteen grandchildren. In 1983 she established her own pre-preparatory school near Cambridge. On retirement she re-kindled her copy-editing skills and has been a copy-editor for Writers’ Workshop since 2006.
Rebecca Horsfall
  Rebecca is the author of Dancing on Thorns, a character driven page turner published by Random House, centering on the world of ballet. Elle Magazine have described her as “The new Jilly Cooper.”
She worked, on and off, for more than a decade for a West End producer as a script supervisor and assistant producer before writing what The Bookseller described as “736 unputdownable pages of pure delight”. She has done office work, theatre directing, teaching, theatrical management — as well as working in a microbiology lab. She has been happily married for fifteen years.
Jane Jakeman
  Jane is the author of
The Malfine trilogy, three atmospheric crime novels set in the early nineteenth-century. The books are Let There Be Blood, The Egyptian Coffin and Fool's Gold. She's also the author of four other novels, also crime fiction set in the past. She's also edited a lavishly illustrated eighteenth century recipe book, Kidder's Receipts.
Jane is the author of numerous articles and reviews in British journals and newspapers, such as The New Statesman, Independent and The Sunday Times. She regularly reviews crime fiction for the Independent.
She has a doctorate in Art History from Oxford, where she now lives with her husband and two cats.
Sam Jordison
  Sam has been earning a living as a writer
since the year 2000. He was the brains behind the
best-selling Crap Towns series and has published a
book about cults, cranks and religious eccentrics
called The Joy Of Sects. He is currently working on
another humour book about disastrous dates and his
first short story was recently published in a
compilation. He has written features and articles for
most national papers in the UK and also regularly
reviews films. He currently lives in Oxford with his partner.
Sheena Joughin
 Sheena has won several prizes for her  short stories, but now concentrates on longer fiction and has published two novels. Fay Weldon said of Things to do Indoors (2003) “She writes like an angel and thinks like the devil”, and Julie Burchill wrote “I love this book”. Her successful debut was followed by Swimming Underwater in 2005, which was widely reviewed and admired. (“Both philosophical and a pleasure”, said The Guardian).
Sheena has also written The Hamlyn History of Twentieth Century Fiction, and reviews for The Times Literary Supplement, The Independent and The New Statesman. She has taught poetry and fiction workshops in London for the past five years, and is a lecturer on the Creative Writing course at Bath Spa University.
In 2007, she started The Life-Writing Project in West London.
Daren King
Daren has written since he was old enough to pick up a pen without putting it in his mouth. His first children's novel, Mouse Noses on Toast, won first prize in the 6-8 age category of the Nestle Children's Book Prize, and his debut adult novel, Boxy an Star, was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and longlisted for the Booker Prize. His books have been published around the world, including Canada and the US, and have been translated into Italian, German and Russian.
photo credited to Rankin
Sophie King / Jane Bidder
Sophie King is the pen name for journalist Jane Bidder. Sophie has had five nove ls published in the last five years by Hodder & Stoughton. She describes them as ‘funny but serious’ domestic dramas, covering divorce through to truculent teens and grannies. Her current novel THE WEDDING PARTY was recently short listed for Love Story of the Year.
Sophie’s non-fiction books include HOW TO WRITE YOUR FIRST NOVEL and HOW TO WRITE SHORT STORIES AND GET PUBLISHED. She has won various awards including the Elizabeth Goudge Trophy and was also runner up for the Harry Bowling Award in 2004.
As a journalist, Sophie/Jane has written for most national newspapers and magazines so can help writers make the transition from journalist-speak to fiction. She has also had several short stories published in women’s magazines. Sophie lectures in creative writing at Oxford University and at Skyros. She also gives regular workshops at festivals. www.sophieking.info.
William Kowalski
 
William is a novelist, screenwriter, and book reviewer for the Globe and Mail. The New York Times has called him 'exuberant' and 'a talented stylist'. His first book, the internationally best-selling Eddie's Bastard (1999), won South Africa's Exclusive Books Ama-Boeke (Book Lover's) Award in 2001, and was twice named to Booksense 76. Of his second novel, Somewhere Out of Here (2001), the New York Times said, '[this book] has all the bravado of a bar stool reminiscence... Kowalski's characters could be escapees from a Kerouac novel.' His third novel, The Adventures of Flash Jackson, was an alternate selection of the Literary Guild Book of the Month Club in 2003. The Scottish Daily Record said of his fourth novel, The Good Neighbour (2004): 'Atmospheric, emotional and beautifully eloquent, Kowalski weaves an engrossing story.' William's fiction has been translated into fifteen languages.
William was born in Ohio and has lived on both the East and West coasts of the United States. A graduate of the Great Books program of St. John's College in Santa Fe, NM, William now lives in Nova Scotia, Canada with his wife and children.
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Tommy read Art History at the University of Sussex, before going on to complete a Master's degree in the same subject at the University of Oxford, writing a dissertation concerned with successful creative practice. He has written all his life, and also does the odd bit of drawing, sculpting, and singing. He takes care of the daily running of the office, but does not write editorial reports.
Kate knew from early on that she wanted to be a novelist. Her first book was Fateful Deception, a historical romance shortlisted for the RNA New Writers Award (2005). She has since published both Perfidy & Perfection, a romantic comedy based in Jane Austen's England (and based on the adventures of a Jane Austen-like character), and The Restless Heart. 
Debi has written four novels. Her first, Nirvana Bites, was described by The Big Issue as: “A quick-paced and witty trawl through London’s sub-cultures.” Her second novel, like Nirvana Bites, “is set in the downtrodden areas of South London she knows well, areas of desolate high rise housing and vibrant street markets.” She has worked as a finance officer, a photographer, farm labourer, life model and wig maker over the years but it was after her children were born that she wrote her first novel, “in the evenings in long hand lying on the settee and then typed it up in chunks using borrowed laptops.”
