new writing from emerging and established writers

Authors

Jacky Tarleton

Jacky lives in Devon and is studying for a PhD at Exeter University, exploring Louis MacNeice’s poetry through the lens of Gaston Bachelard. ‘3 a.m. Phone Call’ won the Huddersfield Festival Poetry Competition in 2010 and ‘On Saturdays Father Wrote Sermons’ was recently runner-up in the Poetry Society’s Stanza Competition.

William Thirsk-Gaskill

William Thirsk-Gaskill is the lost love child of Ted Hughes and Alan Bennett. He writes verse to experience a sense of achievement. He loves distasteful details over palatable abstractions. He lives in an unfinished house with two related faces of the letter J. His blog can be ignored at: http://iamhyperlexic.wordpress.com

Rosie Blagg

Rosie Blagg was born in the West Country in 1983 and has lived in Leeds for the last nine years. She is studying for a Psychology MSc and volunteers at Leeds Survivor Led Crisis Service. Her poems have been published in magazines including The North and The Interpreter’s House.

Julia Deakin

Julia Deakin was born in Nuneaton and teaches at the University of Bradford. The Half-Mile-High Club was a Poetry Business Competition winner and her first collection, Without a Dog, appeared in 2008. Widely published and broadcast, she has read on ‘Poetry Please’ and won four first prizes in 2011.

Nina Boyd

Nina Boyd lives in Huddersfield, where she writes poems about mad women and sad children, and dabbles in fiction. She was the overall winner of the 2009 Poetry Business Book and Pamphlet Competition. Her first collection, Dear Mr Asquith, was published by Smith/Doorstop Books in 2010.

Jim Greenhalf

Jim Greenhalf’s remaining days on earth – 4,000 to 8,000 at a guess – will be spent, hopefully, making the best of the legacy of the previous 23,000, mindful of the Law of Un-foreseen Consequences and the part played by sanctimony and hubris in the daily struggle to acquire grace under pressure.

Gaia Holmes

Gaia Holmes lives in Halifax. She is a free lance writer who works throughout the West Yorkshire region. Gaia’s first poetry collection, Dr James Graham’s Celestial bed, was published in 2006. Her second poetry collection will be published by ‘Comma Press’ in Spring 2012. In her spare time Gaia is a DJ for Phoenix FM, Calderdale’s community radio station, and also bangs big drums at gigs and rehearsals with Sambalifax.

Char March

Char March is a multi-award-winning poet, playwright and fiction writer. Her credits include: five poetry collections, six BBC Radio 4 plays, seven stage plays and numerous short stories. ‘Wings ‘R’ Us’ is from her latest collection: ‘The Thousand Natural Shocks’ (pub. Indigo Dreams). www.charmarch.co.uk

Becky Cherriman

Becky is a commissioned writer, creative writing facilitator, and prize-winning performer based in Leeds. She works regularly for the Workers Educational Association, The West Yorkshire Playhouse, Artlink West Yorkshire and Ilkley Literature Festival, develops writing related resources for The Hepworth Wakefield and is currently penning a magical realist novel.

Geraldine Clarkson

Geraldine Clarkson started writing poetry four years ago. She was awarded an Arvon/Jerwood mentorship with Jo Shapcott and chosen for Writers’ Centre Norwich Escalator development scheme. Her poems appear in Smiths Knoll, Envoi, and This Line Is Not For Turning: An Anthology of Contemporary British Prose Poetry (Cinnamon Press, 2011).

Charlotte Walker

Charlotte Walker is a Poetry MA student studying with Carol Ann Duffy and Michael Symmons Roberts at Manchester Metropolitan University. Charlotte has also run literary events for the Albert Poets in Huddersfield, given poetry workshops and readings at the Elmet Trust, and taught screen writing at Manchester College.

Sharon Black

Sharon Black is originally from Glasgow but now lives in the Cévennes mountains of southern France. She has been published widely and has won several poetry awards including The Frogmore Poetry Prize 2011. Her first poetry collection To Know Bedrock is published by Pindrop Press. www.sharonblack.co.uk

Tim O’Leary

Tim O’Leary is a photographer, former archaeologist, and recent recruit to poetry. Apart from Grist, in the last year he has been commended/shortlisted in Ireland at Strokestown and the Munster Literary Festival, and in Italy at Poetry on the Lake. His work has appeared in Word Gumbo and Poetry Salzburg Review.

Nicky Summerson

Nicky was born in 1949 in Kent. After school she studied and worked in horticulture. She moved to Devon with her husband in 1993 and began writing short stories for fun. She has been writing poetry for 3 years. The Boats is her first poetry competition entry.

Josephine Corcoran

Josephine Corcoran writes poems, plays and short fiction. Some of her work has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and performed at The Chelsea Centre Theatre, London, and is published in various places, most recently in the Bridport Prize Anthology, 2010, and on the webzine, Ink, Sweat & Tears.

Julie Mellor

Julie Mellor graduated from the University of Huddersfield in 1996. She went on to Sheffield Hallam where she gained a PhD in 2003. Her work has appeared in London Magazine, Mslexia and The Rialto and her poem, ‘What I Know’, was voted best Yorkshire entry in the Elmet Open Poetry competition, 2011.

Pete Ardern

Pete Ardern was born in South Cheshire in 1952. He spent his early years drifting from job to job – farmworker, platelayer, gardener before training to be an FE lecturer. He currently teaches refugees on a resettlement project in Hull, Yorkshire and is writing fiction for teenagers (the Bily Ingham series).

David J. Costello

David J. Costello lives in Wallasey, Merseyside, and is co-organiser of local poetry venues “Bards of New Brighton” and “Liver Bards” (the latter in Liverpool). His work has been published in several anthologies and poetry journals including Quantum Leap, Reach Poetry, and Envoi. He has been shortlisted and placed in various competitions, most recently winning the 2011 Welsh Poetry Competition. http://www.wirralbard.x10.mx

Matt O’Brien

Matt O’Brien After I graduate from Huddersfield University with a degree in English Language and Creative Writing, I plan on winning the lottery, moving out of England before it becomes like ‘V for Vendetta’ and making sure that I never see a syntax tree again for as long as I live.

Tim Ellis

Tim Ellis is a gardener in Harrogate. Well known on the Yorkshire performance poetry circuit, in the same week as winning Grist he became York Poetry Slam Champion 2011. His two books are: Birds of the World in Colour (Flarestack) and Gringo on the Chickenbus (Stairwell) See his website: www.birdbard.co.uk

Steve Nash

Steve Nash is based in York, where he fills his hours as a visiting lecturer and PhD student at the University of York St John. His poetry has been published internationally and he serves as the current poetry editor of both Open Wide Magazine and Indigo Rising UK.

Graham Burchell

Graham Burchell was born in Canterbury and now lives in Devon. He has an M.A. in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University. His first collection ‘Vermeer’s Corner’ was published by Foothills Publishing in 2008. His latest collection, ‘The Chongololo Club’, will be published by Pindrop Press in July 2012. www.gburchell.com.

Sarah James

Sarah James has won or been shortlisted in various poetry contests and published in Rialto, Magma, Poetry Nottingham, Orbis, Poetry News and 2012’s Lung Jazz: Young British Poets for Oxfam (ed Todd Swift). Her collection Into the Yell (Circaidy Gregory Press 2010) won third prize in the International Rubery Book Awards 2011. Her website is at www.sarah-james.co.uk.

John Bosley

John Bosley was born 1937 in Stevenage and has lived in Huddersfield for about 25 years. He is an ex-teacher, ex-drugs worker, ex-ceremonies officiant for the British Humanist Association and, for now, an ex-poet – as he is giving short prose a go.

Suzanne McArdle

Suzanne McArdle was born in a British Forces hospital in Berlin and enjoyed a successful career in management before training as a life coach. Her poems and stories have appeared in national magazines and pamphlets. She wrote her first book aged nine and is currently working on her second novel.

Janet Wadsworth

An ex-boat-builder (narrow boats) I write. I’ve had thirty or so stories published, usually in small canal based magazines, and one or two poems. I’ve self published a novel about brass bands, and sold the thousand copies which I had printed. And written two canal thrillers (not yet published).

Liz Holt

Liz Holt is a lecturer in English at Huddersfield University. Most of her publications are non-fictional: She is currently writing a book on the use of laughter in interaction. But she also enjoys writing stories and poems. She has previously published poems for children.

C J Allen

C J Allen’s poetry has appeared in a wide range of magazines & anthologies in the UK, USA, Ireland & elsewhere – everything from Modern Painters to Poetry Review & several points in between – & has been broadcast on BBC Radios 3 & 4. His work has regularly been awarded prizes in numerous competitions, including the Arvon, Ilkely, Yorkshire, Ware, Winchester, Kent & Sussex & Nottingham Open, amongst others. In 2011 he took first prize in the English Association & Ledbury Festival poetry competitions. He is also the winner of this year’s Alan Sillitoe Poetry Award.

Matthew Stoppard

Matthew Hedley Stoppard was born and brought up in Derbyshire, but now lives in Leeds, regularly appearing on the Yorkshire performance circuit. He is a competition winner and features in Popshot, The Cadaverine, Dead Ink and Eunoia Review and forthcoming editions of Iota, Cake Magazine, and Message In A Bottle.

Ian McEwen

Ian McEwen is a charity trustee and online philosophy tutor. Many magazines have published his poems, including Smiths Knoll, Poetry Wales and Poetry Review. He is on the board of Magma. His pamphlet The Stammering Man was a winner in the Templar competition 2010. Ian lives in Bedford.

John Newsham

John Newsham was born in Bradford in 1989. In 2011 he graduated from Lancaster University with a BA Hons. degree in English Literature and Creative Writing. In addition to his passion for writing, John is also a keen musician and amateur rugby league player. He currently lives in West Yorkshire.

Matthew Newby

Matthew Newby is a twenty two year old poet and saxophonist from Leeds. He is a graduate of the University of Hull, where he studied English and American Literature. He was awarded the 2011 LIPPfest Leeds Prize for this poem and is currently putting together his first collection.

Chris Raetschus

Chris Raetschus from South Wales, worked for the Foreign Service in Teheran, lived in Nigeria and Germany, was a College Lecturer in Northampton before settling in Northumberland where she was a Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths. She won the local Ottaker Prize, was published in Orbis, plus highly commended and runner up in various competitions.

Greg White

Greg White is a graduate of the University of Leeds. He is currently working on a collection of poems on the subject of his late Mother’s dementia, of which ‘Tumbler’ is the first to be anthologised.

David Gill

David Gill is author of The Amateur Yorksherman, a bestseller for the legendary Redbeck Press. His songs have been recorded and performed worldwide by top jazz artists including Liane Carroll, Sophie Bancroft and Deborah J. Carter. He currently writes for the cult blues rock jazzer Chaz T.

Charlotte Walker

Charlotte Walker is a Poetry MA student studying with Carol Ann Duffy and Michael Symmons Roberts at Manchester Metropolitan University. Charlotte has also run literary events for the Albert Poets in Huddersfield, given poetry workshops and readings at the Elmet Trust, and taught screen writing at Manchester College.

Angela Varley

When Angela’s not working in a library, she escapes to meander through woods, dawdle along beaches and lie in grass watching clouds. She is inspired to write by reading, having time to contemplate, being close to trees and water, making things with clay and papier maché and engaging with visual art.

Jenny Oliver

Jenny Oliver is a great grandmother twice, who in the fifties discovered a locked ward and ECT. She spent the sixties married, pregnant and watching Jane Goodall on her first telly, wondering why child rearing was worse for women than for primates, she discovered why as a sev enties feminist and inner city teacher before morphing into an eighties Indian guru sex and spirit woman cum adolescent and then travelling via personal growth to a nineties post men kind of lesbian.

Wes Lee

Wes Lee was born and raised in the UK and currently lives in New Zealand. In 2010 she was the recipient of the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Award for the short story. Most recently she was chosen as a finalist in The Essex Poetry Festival Open Poetry Prize; The Troubadour Poetry Prize, in London; and shortlisted for The Plough Prize. Her writing has been widely published in the UK, Ireland, New Zealand & Australia. More information can be found at her website: www.weslee.co.nz.

Tania Spooner

Tania Spooner studied at Oxford University and the Slade School of Art before designing for the theatre. Musical productions took her to Wiener Festwochen, the Young Vic and Winchester Jail, amongst other places. She now writes full-time. A Crack belongs to a collection of short stories. Her novel is currently a 20,000 word document.

Steven Maxwell

Steven Maxwell has had stories published in Horizon Review, Staple, and Dark Tales, and was shortlisted for Legend Press’s “A Tale of Two Halves” novel-writing competition. He is currently studying for an MA in Creative Writing. His debut novel, Hanging Fields, will be published by Montag Press in 2012.

Jonathan Asser

Jonathan Asser is originator of Shame/Violence Intervention (SVI), a therapeutic programme that inhabits the dynamics of violent gang culture in prison. In 2008, SVI won the Innovation Award of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. Jonathan is also a poet (Outside The All Stars, Arc, 2003).

John Boyne

John Boyne was born in Ireland in 1971. The winner of two Irish Book Awards, he has written seven novels including the international bestseller The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, which was made into a Miramax feature film, and The House of Special Purpose, which is published in 2009. His novels are published in 40 languages.

Ben Cheetham

Ben Cheetham’s stories have won awards and been shortlisted for several competitions, including Salt Publishing’s Scott Prize for a full length short story collection. His literary fiction has appeared in Various Authors (published by The Fiction Desk), The London Magazine, The Willisden Herald New Short Stories 3, Dream Catcher, Staple, Fast Forward: A Collection of Flash Fiction, Voice From The Planet (published by Harvard Square Editions), The Momaya Annual Review, The Chaffey Review, Swill and numerous other magazines. Ben lives in Sheffield, UK, where he divides his time between writing and chasing around after his two-year old son.

Christian Stretton

Christian Stretton is the founder and editor of the fiash fiction website And Figs Might Leaf. He is a regular contributor to Ready Steady Book and Rainy City Stories.

Alexei Sayle

Alexei Sayle is a British stand-up comedian, actor and author. He was a central part of the alternative comedy circuit in the early 1980s. In recent years he has turned to writing. He has written two short story collections and five novels. Sayle’s latest book is called Stalin Ate My Homework and is a satirical memoir.

Mark Ellis

Mark Ellis is a liar, a wastrel and a thief. As Artistic Director of Collective Unconscious he is responsible for selling cheap, sexual experiences disguised as contemporary performance. A nasty piece of work, best to be avoided.

Jack Moss

Jack Moss was born in Nottinghamshire in 1988, and currently lives in Leeds.

Joe Else

Joe Else is an impoverished London based refugee from local government, wishing she could find a way back into the 1950s , where she would live in an attic above a Soho drinking club with one gas ring and spend her time writing, learning languages and being clever over espresso. Born in 1969, if you really need to know.

Melvin Burgess

Melvin Burgess is an acclaimed author of fiction for young adults. Junk was published in 1996 and immediately caused controversy. It is still one of the best known young adult fiction titles. His latest novel is called Kill Your Enemies.

Rosie Jones

Rosie Jones recently graduated from the University of Huddersfield with a First Class Honours Degree in English Language with Creative Writing and The Blue Touch Prize for Outstanding Writing. In her spare time, she loves to write short stories and is particularly inspired by the way in which tragedies test even the strongest relationships. She recently secured a job as a trainee researcher for Objective Productions in London as part of the Channel 4 Diversity Production Scheme.

Louis Malloy

Louis Malloy lives in Nottingham. He has had over forty stories published in a range of magazines and anthologies and has won various prizes, most recently first prize in the University Of Plymouth Short Fiction Competition. Publications his work has appeared in include The Edinburgh Review, The New Writer and The Middlesex University Press Anthology. Louis is also a novelist and a prolifically successful recipient of encouraging rejection letters.

Mason Henry Summers

Mason Henry Summers is currently working on his second novel whilst seeking a publisher for his first. Formerly a writer on film and cinema he now writes novels, short fiction and comment and is also working on a screenplay co-written with another writer. His work has been described as imaginative, funny, disturbing, relentless and certainly unique. He is co-organiser of Fictions Of Every Kind, the Leeds based open mic writer’s event and showcase, where he comperes and occasionally reads. You can find examples of his work and contact details at www.monkeytwohands.com.

Dan Malach

Dan Malach spends his days in the Manchester rain, weeping, but nobody notices because of the rain.

Suzi Lester

Suzi Lester was born in 1848. She fell through a rip in time and ended up in modern day Leeds, where she now works as a full time receptionist. In her spare time she likes eating, daydreaming and listening to Morrissey. She has a weakness for unusual notebooks and is constantly on the lookout for good vegan chocolate.

Stephen McQuiggan

Stephen McQuiggan is from Northern Ireland and is a direct descendant of Judas Iscariot.

Susan Everett

Susan Everett is an award-winning screenwriter and short story writer. Her first novel, Crazy Horse, was published by Route, and was a finalist in the Peoples Book Prize, 2010. Her short stories have appeared in several anthologies including The Book of Leeds (Comma), Next Stop Hope and Compendium (both Route). She wrote and directed the short film Mother, Mine, which played at 80 film festivals and won 16 international awards.

David T Hay

David T Hay is a freelance director in the TV industry and is more accustomed to writing for documentaries. Thankfully, the spells of unemployment that come with the profession give him the occasional opportunity to create some good, proper fiction.

John Todd

John Todd was born in Hope in Derbyshire and now lives in Sutton Coldfield. He has been a local government officer and a lexicographer. ‘The House Next Door’ is his first published story.

David Pescod

David Pescod started writing jokes for BBC radio, whilst a student at The Royal College of Art. After running a greetings cards company he began writing prose in 2002, and ‘Rising Laughter’, a short story, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Other stories have been published in literary magazines and his first collection will be published by Route later this year. His story ‘All Embracing’ was adapted for a short film and selected for TCM’s top twenty in 2009. He was selected for Norwich Writers Escalator scheme and recently awarded an Arts Council Grant to complete his first novel.

Glenis Burgess

Glenis Burgess entered the Huddersfield Literature Festival competition under a pseudonym and, in the Peacock Lounge one evening sitting in an unknowing audience, could hardly stop herself screaming with delight when the shortlist was announced – she did go outside and yell a bit, though. She started writing in 2009 and the story featured in this anthology is about the third story she has written. She’s had no (literary) reason to scream since the Huddersfield Literature Festival, mainly because she hasn’t entered any other competitions. She is now in the Otley Courthouse Writers and Leeds Writers Circle, and is still writing, so watch this, and other spaces.

Toby Litt

Toby Litt is best-known for writing his books – from Adventures in Capitalism to (so far) King Death – in alphabetical order; he is currently working on L. If he’s known for anything else, it’s occasionally constructing extremely technically restricted stories of a non-Oulipian sort for Radio 3’s The Verb. His headfuckfiction™ story ‘John & John’ won the semi-widely-known Manchester Fiction Prize. His website is slowly going senile at www.tobylitt.com.

Penny Aldred

Penny Aldred won first prize in the Northern Echo/Orange short story competition in 2004. Her stories have appeared in Aesthetica, two Route anthologies, on BBC Radio 4’s Afternoon Reading and turned into live art in Urbis as part of the Manchester Literature Festival 2007. She lives in West Yorkshire.

Timothy Allsop

Timothy Allsop is an actor and writer. He was educated at Oxford University, Royal Holloway and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He has appeared on stage at the National Theatre, the Globe and Manchester Library Theatre amongst other venues. He has written for the stage and radio, and is currently completing a novel. He lives in London.

Simon Armitage

Simon Armitage was born in 1963 and lives in West Yorkshire. He has published nine volumes of poetry. His numerous awards include The Sunday Times Author of the Year, one of the first Forward Prizes and a Cannon Award.

Glenn Carmichael

Glenn Carmichael is from Darlington, County Durham. He now lives in Bristol. He has published a couple of poetry books, had a few short stories appear in magazines and had one novel published. He teaches performance poetry in schools and novel writing to adults. He likes to write and perform prose.

Glynis Charlton

Glynis Charlton ditched the desk job to pursue freelance writing and these days moves from workshops to websites. Her work, known for its often bleak quality, has appeared in print, performance and on screen. She was shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize in 2008 and is currently working on her second novel.

Brindley Hallam Dennis

Brindley Hallam Dennis has won competitions at Radio Cumbria and Cumbria Life magazine, and Bank Street Writers & Grist prizes (2009). His work is published, broadcast and performed. An award winning poet writing as Mike Smith, he teaches Creative Writing at Cumbria University and has an MLitt from Glasgow University. Read his blog here

Kate Dempsey

Kate Dempsey is from Coventry but now lives in Maynooth. Her poetry and fiction is widely published and she has been nominated for and won many prizes including The Francis MacManus and Hennessy New Irish Writing awards. She runs the Poetry Divas collective who are available to read at all cool festivals.

Paul Duncan

Paul Duncan is a sweet smelling, effervescent writer who was born in 1976. He resides in Leeds, and after a vigorous bout of education has recently graduated from university. In the future, he hopes to inflict his imagination on as many of the general population as is possible.

Fiona Durance

Fiona Durance has worked in dance, music, equalities training and as a BSL interpreter. She considers poetry the music of meaning, and particularly enjoys creative experimentation. Her work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, and in theatres, galleries and on radio. Her writing has been placed in international competitions.

Gareth Durasow

Gareth Durasow is a prize-winning poet and performer who runs with the mainstream hares and the avant-garde hounds. His work has appeared in numerous magazines and web-journals. In his spare time he helps run Letterbomb, a popular poetry openmic night in Leeds, and he also writes for Horizon Arts theatre company; a job which pays enough to keep him in teaching.

Len Evans

Len Evans began writing poetry as part of his counselling training in 1998. He’s had poems published by CK Publishing and read publicly in Manchester, including a fundraiser for Christie’s Hospital in 2008. He’s inspired by Hughes, Donne and R S Thomas and is hoping to start a new writers poetry group in Manchester.

John Glander

John Glander is one of those people to whom writing is rather like breathing and eating, a necessity. He has written and produced plays with school drama groups, published poetry and recently been placed in literary competitions. Though resident in Essex, his soul remains deeply rooted in his native Somerset.

Mick Haining

Mick Haining came from the hills of Donegal to the flatness of Selby, used to teach Drama in the latter and now spends far too much time sedated by films. Nicola and the grown children are the jewels in his life.

Joanne Harris

Joanne Harris was born in Barnsley in 1964. She is the author of many novels including: The Evil Seed, Chocolat, Blackberry Wine, Five Quarters of the Orange and The Lollipop Shoes. Joanne has judged both The Whitbread and Orange Literary Prizes.

Beda Higgins

Beda Higgins publishes prose and poetry and is a future Booker Prize winner. In her spare time she works as a Practice Nurse and makes toast for her three children. She has five sisters, a twin brother and a St Bernard.

Cath Humphris

Cath Humphris is a writer and part-time tutor in adult education. She has written plays for the amateur stage, adapted a novel for performance by university drama students and edited four non-fiction books. Right now, she is working on a series of short stories for younger readers.

Ruth Inglis

Ruth Inglis is a final year student at the University of Huddersfield studying English Literature and Creative Writing. Her poem Dreaming of Carpet Cleaner is her first published work and she hopes it will not be her last. After graduating she intends to pursue a career in publishing while continuing to write in her spare time.

Skye Loneragan

Skye Loneragan is an Australian writer/performer whose work includes the solo shows: My Right Thumb, Cracked (Edinburgh Fringe First), Unsex Me Here and The Line We Draw. She has performed a lot of her poetry and is currently working on a cross-artform residency with The Tramway, Glasgow.

Natalya Lowndes

Natalya Lowndes is the pseudonym of the art historian Sarah Symmons who teaches at the University of Essex. She published her first novel, Chekago (Hodder and Stoughton, 1988) to great critical acclaim. Since then she has published two further novels, short fiction and six non-fiction books.

Andrew McMillan

Andrew McMillan has been poet-in-residence of his own life since October 1988. His poetry has appeared widely in print and online magazines. He is co-editor of Cake Literary Magazine and his debut pamphlet is due in October 2009 from Red Squirrel Press.

Ian McMillan

Ian McMillan was born in 1956 near Barnsley. He has written many books of poetry as well as plays for radio and stage. He is the poet in residence at Barnsley Football Club. He also appears on Newsnight Review and presents The Verb on Radio 3.

Hilary J Murray

Hilary J Murray is a founder member of Borderstones Poets, Leeds; co-founder of Yorkshire women’s poetry network EPIC. Poems feature in Second Bite (Grey Hen Press 2007), along with Joy Howard’s and Gina Shaw’s. The three of them perform as ‘Second Bite’ e.g. headlining the Poetry Alive! event at the 2009 Ilkley Literature Festival.

Karl O’Neill

Karl O’Neill was born in Armagh, Northern Ireland, and is a professional actor based in Dublin. He has had short stories published in several periodicals and his children’s book The Most Beautiful Letter In The World is published by O’Brien Press. He has recently completed his first novel, August Time.

Holly Oreschnick

Holly Oreschnick is currently studying Creative Writing at the University of Huddersfield. She has a deep interest in literature and poetry and has performed her poetry at many acclaimed venues around West Yorkshire. She has been a festival organiser for the Janet Beaumont Music and Drama festival and has taught English at Mara Primary School in Tanzania. She is very excited about being a part of the Grist Anthology.

Christopher Parvin

Christopher Parvin lives in his head and holds a degree in Imaginative Writing from John Moores University. He has come third in the Ted Walters International Short Story Competition and is currently eating many a tonnage of finger nails writing his first novel. This will be his first published story. www.ghostlandia.blogspot.com/

Kyrill Potapov

Kyrill Potapov has written for print, stage and radio - each form retaining his unique and often quirky voice. The surreal acrobatics of his narrative call for an agile reader. The only thing one can predict about his stories, is that they will somehow involve cats and offer a musical experience.

Jess Richards

Jess Richards is a writer who draws on mythology, fairy stories, psychology and the unconscious. She has written stories since childhood, but only recently and started to send them off. Since then three of her short stories have since been accepted for publication this year. She is now working on her first novel.

Lynn Roberts

Lynn Roberts is an artist and art historian, and has co-written those riveting best-sellers, A History of European Picture Frames and Frameworks (1996). She has had poems published in Outposts, Agenda, Envoi and LightenUp Online and has just won the 2009 Listowel Writers’ Week Poetry Collection competition. Visit her site here www.lynnroberts.co.uk

Ami Roseingrave

Ami Roseingrave was born in Ireland and now lives in London with her husband and two children. Having taken time out from a career in research, she started writing fiction and began writing poetry eighteen months ago. Her work has been published by Ragged Raven, Ver Poets and Norwich Writers’ Circle.

Jacquie Shanahan

Jacquie Shanahan is an architectural publisher, with a Diploma in Creative Writing from Oxford University’s Continuing Education Department. She’s participated in poetry readings at Blackwells, and was shortlisted in a Radio Oxford short story competition. Jacquie is now completing her first novel, while studying for an MA at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Helen Simpson

Helen Simpson’s first collection of short stories Four Bare Legs in a Bed and Other Stories (1990), won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. There followed Dear George, Hey Yeah Right Get a Life (winner of the Hawthornden Prize and E.M.Forster Award) and Constitutional. Her fifth collection of stories will be published in 2010.

Lemn Sissay

Lemn Sissay is the author of five poetry collections, his latest being Listener. He has also written for the stage and presented a six-part jazz series for the BBC. A documentary about Lemn’s life called Internal Flight was recently broadcast on BBC One. He is a patron of the Huddersfield Literature Festival.

Katherine Spink

Katherine Spink lives in her own fantasy world where surreal things happen and odd behaviour is the norm. Occasionally she writes it down for other people to read. However, her story The Unknown Boxer Shorts is entirely fictional. Honest.

Kelly Stanger

Kelly Stanger graduated from the University of Huddersfield with a first class honours degree in English with Creative Writing. In 2005 her poem Market Kids was shortlisted for the Poetry Business competition and published in the Huddersfield Examiner. Kelly has performed her poetry at the Albert Hotel and the Beehive Inn.

Michael Stewart

Michael Stewart is a liar, a lyre and a lier, whose thoughts are strung on binding wire.

Andrea Tang

Andrea Tang graduated in 2008 with a first class honours degree from the University of Huddersfield in BA English Literature with Creative Writing. In 2008 she had micro-fiction and poetry published in competition anthologies by Leaf Books and Earlyworks Press. She was born in Malaysia, but resides in Huddersfield.

Anna-Marie Vickerstaff

Anna-Marie Vickerstaff is inspired by Samuel Beckett, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jon McGregor, Franz Kafka and Stephen Chbosky. She is currently entering her final year on a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing course at the Univeristy of Huddersfield. In the future she hopes to write a dystopian novel, re-visit South Africa and grow rhubarb in her shed.

Martin Wickham

Martin Wickham has trained with Sir Alan Ayckbourn at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, studying script writing and acting. He was a member of the National Student Drama Festival ensemble in 2005 and won the Leeds Bright Young Things Music Competition in 2007. He is currently studying Creative Writing at the University of Huddersfield.

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