Robin Lloyd-Jones

Robin is the author of three novels, two collections of short stories and half a dozen non-fiction books. His novel, Lord of the Dance, won the BBC Bookshelf First Novel Award and was entered for the Booker Prize. ‘Amazing imaginative brilliance,’ said The Times of this novel.

Robin also writes radio drama, his play, Ice in Wonderland, winning the Radio Times Best Drama Script for 1992. Robin has conducted many writers' workshops and, for four years, he was a tutor in Creative Writing at Glasgow University. Robin is a former president of the Scottish Association of Writers for whom he has adjudicated many short story and novel competitions.

He lives in Helensburgh, on the west coast of Scotland, with his wife.

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Michelle Lovric

Michelle is a novelist, writer and anthologist. Her first novel, Carnevale, is the story of the painter Cecilia Cornaro. Her second novel, The Floating Book, about the perilous beginnings of the print industry in Venice, was a London Arts award winner, and a WH Smith ‘Read of the Week’. Her latest novel, The Remedy, was long-listed for the 2005 Orange Prize for Fiction. The Remedy is a literary murder-mystery.

Michelle reviews for publications including The Independent and The Times and writes travel articles about Venice. She combines her fiction work with editing, designing and producing literary anthologies. Her book Love Letters was a New York Times best-seller. Dividing her time between London and Venice, she also holds workshops with published writers of poetry and prose, fiction and memoir.

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Lesley McDowell

Lesley started off in academia, with an MA in English Literature at Glasgow University followed by a PhD on James Joyce. She taught for two years in the English Dept at St Andrews University, including a stint on their creative writing course, and published several academic articles.

In 1997 she left to become a full-time literary critic and has written for the TLS, Guardian, Independent, Ind-ependent on Sunday, Scotsman, Herald and Literary Review. Her first short story, Dear Anne, was short-listed for the Scotsman/Orange Short Story prize in 2005 and subsequently published in the volume Secrets, edited by Janice Galloway. Her first novel, The Picnic, was published in August 2007. She has taught two creative writing courses at Glasgow University, has completed her second novel, The Others, and has just begun a third, Revenant. She is also working on a non-fiction book about literary partnerships .

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Alan McKenzie

Alan is our editor for graphic novels. He spent the first ten years of his working life trying to get away from comics, a task made especially difficult since he was an assistant editor on first MAD magazine and House of Hammer. In a burst of warped logic, he joined Marvel Comics to edit venerated film magazine Starburst but somehow acquired Doctor Who Monthly into his portfolio. After spending a couple of years as a freelance author, writing three non-fiction books, he somehow fetched up on the editorial staff of the UK’s premier weekly adventure comic 2000AD, where he contributed Judge Dredd stories and created the characters Universal Soldier, Brigand Doom, Bradley and the fan-favourite The Journal of Luke Kirby, which chronicled the adventures of a boy wizard ten years before there was Harry Potter.

Alan is currently working on two graphic novels with long-time collaborators Steve Parkhouse and Brett Ewins.

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Alex Martin

Alex writes novels for children and adults, historical and travel works, and educational textbooks. As Medlar Lucan he has posed as a decadent chef, gardener, traveller, charlatan and poet, inspired by luminaries such as Wilde, Huysmans, Baudelaire and Cagliostro. Publications include The General Interruptor (Betty Trask Prize 1988), The Hell Fire Touring Club, Introductions to Modern English Literature, Modern Poetry, Modern Short Stories, Modern Plays, & Modern Novels (all ed. with Robert Hill), as well as a number of works for children.

He has been a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund and Fellow at the Westminster Institute of Education, Oxford Brookes University. He spent several years teaching in Italy before settling with his family in Oxford.

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Haydn Middleton

Haydn has written for a living since 1980.

His seven literary-fantasy novels range from The People in the Picture (hailed by Anthony Burgess as ‘an astonishing fictional debut’) to Grimm’s Last Fairytale (‘a modern fairytale that should last at least a hundred years’ according to USA’s Kirkus Reviews).

He has lectured on or taught creative writing in England, America, Greece and Australia. He has also written more than seventy books for children - some of which are admittedly very short indeed!

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Eloise Millar

Elly wrote her first novel, Wednesday's Child, while working for The Guardian and living in London. Wednesday's Child was published by Virago in 2004 and went on to be shortlisted for the YoungMinds Award. She is currently working on her second novel, Bleeding Heart Yard, a story of mystery and murder set in the seventeenth-century London underworld. Bleeding Heart Yard has been commissioned by TimeWarner and has received awards from the Arts Council and the Authors' Foundation.

Now living in Oxford, Elly continues to work for the academic publisher Taylor & Francis.

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Tiffany Murray

Tiffany has taught creative writing at The University of East Anglia, Bath Spa University and Manchester Metropolitan University. She edited Pretext 8: Once Upon A Time… with Helon Habila and her novel Happy Accidents was published to excellent reviews in 2004.

She is the recipient of a 2005 Arts Council grant and Happy Accidents has been longlisted for The Everyman Bollinger Wodehouse Prize. Tiffany's writing has appeared in The Times, The Independent and The Observer.

She lived and worked in New York for many years but currently lives in Herefordshire. She has an MA and PhD in Creative and Critical writing from UEA.

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Jenny Newman

Jenny is Reader in Creative Writing at Liverpool John Moores University. She is also the acclaimed author of three novels, Going In, Life Class, and Heritage (forthcoming).

Many writers will also know her for The Writers' Workbook, a text that has become a crucial learning tool for creative writing students. Booker Prize-winning novelist Barry Unsworth said of The Writer's Workbook, "I wish I'd had it at my elbow when I started out."

Jenny has also recently co-edited British and Irish Novelists: An Introduction through Interviews. She also teaches fiction writing for the Arvon foundation.

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Elizabeth North

Elizabeth started her writing career in radio (plays,document-aries, and an award-winning classic serial adaptation). She has also published eight novels and contributed short stories to anthologies and magazines.  Of her novel Dames, it was said: 'She has all the virtues of the English social novelist'. And of Ancient Enemies: 'Fast and funny: Move over Holden Caulfield.'

Her teaching has included play-writing courses for Oxford University Continuing Education, residential courses at the Arvon Foundation and story workshops both in the UK and the USA.  She has been Fellow in Creative Writing at Bretton Hall and was a founding tutor for the Open College of the Arts.

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Martin Ouvry

Martin worked as a musician in Europe and America, before going to the University of East Anglia to read English under the tutelage of Whitbread Prize-winner Lorna Sage. Having gained two end of year prizes and a First Class degree, Martin went on to take the university’s MA course in Creative Writing, and was awarded the UEA Alumni Association Prize for Fiction.

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Anastasia Parkes

Anastasia was head girl at a Sacred Heart Convent before attending Oxford University where she read English.  She has variously worked as a London temp, a kindergarten headmistress in Cairo, a legal clerk for criminal lawyers, and as a freelance features writer.

Under the pseudonym Primula Bond she has had two erotic novels published by Virgin Books with a third out in June 2007.  She also writes short stories for Virgin’s Black Lace and Confessions imprints and Xcite Books, as well as for Forum, For Women and Scarlet magazines.  However, she is also working on a non-fiction memoir about her time in Cairo and a ‘choc-lit’ novel (dark, rich, and full of people eating Penguins).

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Dexter Petley

Dexter is the acclaimed author of a number of novels: a literary noir whodunnit, Little Nineveh (Polygon 1995), Joyride (Fourth Estate, 1999), and White Lies (Fourth Estate 2003). White Lies was shortlisted for the Dazed & Confused Most Promising Writer award. Dexter was also shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize 2006 for his translation of The Fishing Box (by Maurice Genevoix , co-translated with Laure Claesen). He won an Authors' Foundation Award for non-fiction in 2004.

Dexter is a passionate angler, organic gardener, old Land Rover nut. Though currently living in a caravan in Burgundy mountains, he aims to build a yurt and live out life on solar power and permaculture.

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Jane Purcell

Jane used to work in children’s books at Random House, but left to travel the world.  Since then she has written and performed sketch comedy for radio (The Way It Is on Radio 4) and television, (Smack the Pony for Channel 4 and The Sketch Show for ITV/Baby Cow).

Her first play was Beryl du Jour for Radio 4, followed by a five-part Woman’s Hour series for Radio 4, Cooking for Michael Collins.  The Guardian described it as 'gripping’, and the Financial Times said 'Jane Purcell's retelling of the story of Pidgie Rigney ... is immediately gripping... Riveting.' Her next Woman’s Hour series was about the history of girls comics, 43 Years in the Third Form.  The Telegraph said it was 'funny, ingenious and evocative.'

Jane is currently co-writing and performing in Whoosh! a children’s sketch comedy series for BBC 7.  She lives in London with her husband and two children.  Her mother says her teatowels are ‘an absolute disgrace'.

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Linda Proud

Linda is the author of a trilogy of novels set in Renaissance Florence. A Tabernacle for the Sun was greeted as 'Historical fiction at its best!' by the Historical Novels Society and Pallas and the Centaur with 'Historical novelist of genius' by Pamela Tudor Craig. Linda has published six other books including Consider England and Knights of the Grail. Awards for her writing include a Southern Arts bursary in 1996 and a Hawthornden award in 1998.

She has had a long career in publishing, most recently working as general editor on children's educational books. She also acts as creative writing tutor for American universities running programmes in Oxford. She lectures frequently on Renaissance topics and on writing. She also runs workshops and gives guided tours of Tuscany. Linda runs a small publishing house and is able to guide clients through the process of self-publication, if desired.

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Fay Sampson

Fay is the author of numerous books for both adults and children.

Her work draws heavily on myth, the Arthurian legends, and the historical world of Celtic and post-Roman Britain. Works for adults include the Morgan Le Fay series, The Island Pilgrimage and The Silent Fort. Works for children include The Sorcerer's Trap, Them, and the Pangur Ban stories. She has been shortlisted three times for the Guardian Children's Book award, and is winner of the Barco de Vapor award for The Watch on Patterick Fell. She also writes non-fiction books on historical themes.

Fay writes full time and lives in a Tudor cottage in the West Country.

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Jeremy Sheldon

Jeremy is is the author of a collection of short stories, The Comfort Zone, and a novel, The Smiling Affair, both published by Jonathan Cape.

Besides this, he has worked as a script consultant specialising in adaptations for a number of film production companies, including Miramax Films, Working Title and Icon Entertainment. He currently works as a freelance script-editor and also teaches as part of Birkbeck College's M.A. in Creative Writing programme and on behalf of the Arvon Foundation.

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Rebecca Smith

Rebecca was born in London in 1966 of Indian-English & Scottish parents, and spent most of her childhood in rural Surrey. She studied History at Southampton University and still lives in the city. Southampton is the setting for her first novel The Bluebird Cafe (Bloomsbury 2001). Her second, Happy Birthday and All That (Bloomsbury 2003), is set in Southampton, Winchester and Cornwall. Her third, A Bit of Earth (Bloomsbury 2006), is set in a botanical garden. She is currently working on a collection of short stories, and a work of fiction for children.

Rebecca teaches creative writing at Southampton University and in Winchester. She has three children, and is the great great great great great neice of Jane Austen.

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Diana Stainforth

Diana wrote her first novel – Bird of Paradise - while working for Rebecca West, the Grande Dame of British literature, whose archive she catalogued. With that first novel accepted and a second – The Indiscretion – commissioned, Diana became a full time writer. Five more novels followed, all published in both hardback and paperback and mainly by Random House in the UK. She has also been published in the US and translated into German, Russian, Czech, Bulgarian and Romanian. Her 7th novel is currently under production by German television.

She has considerable judging experience having judged the Betty Trask Award for the Society of Authors, the London Writers’ Competition, and she is a reader for the Romantic Novelists’ Association Novel of the Year Award.

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Veronica Stallwood

Veronica has fourteen books in the bookshops, all currently in print. Eleven of them feature Kate Ivory, a historical novelist living in Oxford who frequently – and often unwillingly – finds herself involved in a crime. The setting for these crime novels is Oxford, with its colleges, libraries, parks and waterways.

In addition to these, she have written two suspense novels which are not part of the Kate Ivory series. Deathspell is about a strange child who decides to get rid of her bullying stepfather. The Rainbow Sign tells of a tragedy that happened thirty years ago in the Middle East. The Times has commented, 'Stallwood has fought her way to the top of the tree in British crime writing'.

She lives near Oxford, but has so far not solved any notable murders.

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Ashley Stokes

Ashley took an MA in creative writing at the University of East Anglia, Britain's best known and most respected creative writing school, where he now works as a tutor. He is also an associate lecturer in creative writing for the Open University and the Norwich School of Art and Design.

Ashley is a prolific writer of short stories, which have appeared in This is, Pretext, EM, Hard and Other Stories, Take 20, Signals 3, Spiked, England Calling, Birdsuit, Bonfire. He has also contributed to The Creative Writing Coursebook (Macmillan).

He won a 2002 Bridport Short Story Prize for The Suspicion of Bones. He's currently writing a novel, The Hazel Phase, and co-writing a screenplay.

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Jane Struthers

Jane’s first taste of astrology was in her teens, courtesy of Jackie magazine, but this didn’t offer a lot of scope so she began teaching herself ‘proper’ astrology. She also discovered tarot and palmistry, and began writing novels. Since then, she’s spent her entire career in publishing, first as an editor and now as a professional writer.

Jane is the author of over twenty non-fiction books on a variety of topics, including interior design and popular British history. She specializes in books on mind, body and spirit, including The Palmistry Bible, Understanding Astrology, Destiny Tarot and the best-selling The Psychic’s Bible. For two years she wrote the astrology column in The Sun, and is now the astrologer for Bella magazine.

Jane and her husband live in a rural corner of East Sussex with their two cats.

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Craig Taylor

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Craig has published two literary novels (as C M Taylor), Light and Cloven, a dark take on 2001's foot and mouth disease outbreak. Under the nom de plume Ed Lark, Taylor has published Grief, a dystopian fantasy which was nominated for the British Science Fiction Association Book of the Year, 2005. The BFSA wrote, "Grief is a magnificent novel… Ed Lark is certainly a writer to look out for."

C M Taylor's journalism has been published in the national press, including The Guardian and The Telegraph.

He took a Cambridge first in Social Anthropology and lived in India, Belgium and Spain, before recently settling in Oxford with his wife and canoe. He is currently working on a non-fiction book about allotments and a novel.

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Paul Toth

Paul has lived in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and Denver before returning to his home state of Michigan in 1996. Two novels, Fizz and Fishnet, have been published by Bleak House Books. A third novel is expected to be released in the United States within the next year. He is now revising his fourth novel. Toth has published over a hundred stories.

Toth also teaches creative writing and hosts a weekly podcast. Much of his work may be accessed from his official website at www.netpt.tv, while his podcast can be downloaded from http://tothnews.libsyn.com/ or I-Tunes.

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Val Tyler

Val is the author of two books for children, The Time Wreccas and The Time Apprentice. The first of these was shortlisted for the inaugural Ottakar's children's book prize, and was also the Ottakar's Book of the Month. The second was praised by the Independent for its, 'clever pseudo-science, attractive characterisation and well-sustained suspense.'

Val was a teacher for twenty years, teaching every age group from five to eighteen. She now writes full time and lives deep in the Welsh countryside.

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Tricia Wastvedt

Tricia Wastvedt was born in London in 1954 and grew up in south-east England. She has been a secretary, a gardener and a designer. She began writing in 1998. THE RIVER, her first novel, was long-listed for the Orange Prize, shortlisted for the Authors' Club Prize, and is currently on the longlist for Le Prince Maurice prize. She is working on her second novel.

She also teaches on the MA Creative Writing Course at Bath Spa University and has occasional teaching commitments in France.

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John Wilson

John has worked as a professional writer since 1963. Three of his psycho-thriller novels (Omega Cloister, Flatmate and the US award-winning Turmfalke) have been published by HarperCollins. His historical sci-fi adventure Guardians of Alexander was published by Big Engine and then expanded into a trilogy called Goldbane. His poetry and short stories have been published in dozens of newspaper and magazines. One of his plays was performed by a strange bunch of people in a church hall in Hampstead.

He now lives in mid-Wales, writing fiction and holding creative writing courses and workshops.