2021

Emma Walton Hamilton is an author, editor, producer, and arts educator. She has written or co-written over thirty books for children and young adults, as well as two memoirs and a book on raising readers. A faculty member of Stony Brook University’s MFA in Creative Writing and Literature, she teaches children’s literature and playwriting. Her poems have been published in SCBWI’s Bulletin, JULIE ANDREWS’ COLLECTION OF POEMS, SONGS AND LULLABIES and TREASURY FOR ALL SEASONS, and the Texas Education Agency’s “Assessment of Academic Readiness, Grade 5,” among others. She holds a masters degree in Creative Writing from Stony Brook.

Armen Davoudian is the author of Swan Song, which won the 2020 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. His poems and translations from Persian appear in AGNI, The Sewanee Review, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. He grew up in Isfahan, Iran and lives in California, where he is a PhD candidate in English at Stanford University.

Erin Lambert Hartman is an American poet and the author of the chapbook Resolution (Finishing Line Press, 2008). Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Blackbird, Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, and The Madison Review. This Bridport Anthology is her first international publication. She earned an MFA in creative writing from Syracuse University (2001), and has taught at Hostos Community College, Virginia Commonwealth University, and James Madison University. Erin is now a licensed massage therapist and owns a small healing arts practice in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

Jennie Ziverk Carr is a native daughter of the Ozark Mountains in Missouri, USA. Writing has been an important expressive outlet through every stage of her life - as a child, an art historian, a teacher, and currently, as a homeschooling mother-of-two in Texas. Jennie has developed her writing portfolio over many years, and is proud to begin submitting her work for competition and publication. Her writing has been featured in NPR’s 2018 Poetry Month series and on Rhode Island Public Radio’s program This I Believe: New England. Jennie is eager to pursue more opportunities to share and to publish her work.

Courtney Conrad is a Jamaican poet. Her poetry explores the intersectional politics of race, religion, gender, sexuality and migration. She is a current member of Malika's Poetry Kitchen and the London Library Emerging Writers Programme. She is an alumna of the Roundhouse Poetry Collective. Her poems have appeared in The White Review, Magma Poetry, Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, Stand Magazine, and Poetry Wales and anthologised by Bad Betty Press and Anamot Press. She was shortlisted for The White Review Poet's Prize 2020 and longlisted for the Rebecca Swift Women Poets’ Prize 2020 and The Rialto Nature and Place Poetry Competition.

Jo Davis' poetry has appeared in magazines such as PN Review, Strix, Ink Sweat & Tears, Butcher's Dog, anthologies Alter Egos (Bad Betty Press) and Cry of the Poor (Culture Matters), and is currently longlisted for the Winchester Prize. She was guest editor of Tentacular and a poetry editor for The Mays. She ran Darwin College Poetry Society at the University of Cambridge, where she completed her PhD and won the William Barclay Squire Essay Prize. She founded writers’ group Coppermill Poets, whose book-length poem, The Patchwork Epic of Waltham Forest, was commissioned for Words Over Waltham Forest literary festival.

Susannah Hart’s debut collection Out of True won the Live Canon First Collection Prize in 2018 and her poem Reading the Safeguarding and Child Protection Policy won first prize in the 2020 National Poetry Competition. She has been widely published in magazines and online. Susannah is on the board of Magma Poetry, works as a freelance copywriter and is a long-serving governor at her local primary school.

Lois P. Jones’ awards include the Bristol Poetry Prize judged by Liz Berry, the Lascaux Poetry Prize, the Tiferet Poetry Prize and as winning finalist for the 2018 Terrain Poetry Contest judged by Jane Hirshfield. Jones has work published or forthcoming in Plume, Guernica Editions 2021, New Voices: Contemporary Writers Confronting the Holocaust (Vallentine Mitchell of London – 2021); Publishers Weekly, Arabic Edition “Al-Nasher Al-Usboei”; Verse Daily, and Narrative. Jones’ first collection, “Night Ladder” was published by Glass Lyre Press and listed for several awards. She is the poetry editor for Kyoto Journal and a screening judge for the Kingsley-Tufts Awards.

Nick Makoha is the founder of The Obsidian Foundation. Winner of the 2021 Ivan Juritz prize. In 2017, Nick’s debut collection, Kingdom of Gravity, was shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection and was one of the Guardian’s best books of the year. Nick is a Cave Canem Graduate Fellow and the Complete Works alumnus. He won the 2015 Brunel International African Poetry Prize and the 2016 Toi Derricotte & Cornelius Eady Prize. His poems have appeared in the Cambridge Review, the New York Times, Poetry Review, Rialto, Poetry London, TriQuarterly Review, Boston Review, Callaloo and Wasafiri.

David Swann's stories and poems have now won nine awards at The Bridport Prize. His book The Privilege of Rain (Waterloo Press, 2010), about his residency in a high-security prison, was shortlisted for The Ted Hughes Award. He teaches at The University of Chichester, and is the author of a forthcoming novella, Season of Bright Sorrow (Ad Hoc, 2021). Dave started his working life as a reporter on Accrington Stanley’s football matches and has now recovered from the excitement. He divides his time between Brighton and Hove.

Jane Thomas is a British poet based in Oxford. She is currently completing a pamphlet on the subject of Alzheimer’s. In 20/21 she has been shortlisted in The Rialto Pamphlet Competition, The PS Stanza, Fish, Live Canon, Poetry Wales and The FPM-Hippocrates Prize and published in: Stand, The Rialto, Envoi, Mslexia and The Oakland Review. Her work has been included in anthologies including NAHR, Ver Poets, Hippocrates, Live Canon and Glean & Graft. She is an active member of Oxford Stanza II and Ver Poets and occasional reviewer for Sphinx. https://www.janethomas.org/ @janethomas33

Jessica Traynor’s debut collection, Liffey Swim (Dedalus Press, 2014), was shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award and in 2016 was named one of the best poetry debuts of the past five years on Bustle.com. The Quick, was a 2019 Irish Times poetry choice. Awards include the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary and Hennessy New Writer of the Year. Paper Boat, a new opera commission, will premiere in 2022. Residencies in 2021-22 include Yeats Society Sligo, The Seamus Heaney Home Place and the DLR LexIcon. She is a Creative Fellow of UCD. Pit Lullabies will be published by Bloodaxe Books in 2022.

Adrienne Wilkinson’s debut pamphlet, repeating mouths, in which ‘both the lesbian erotic and the traumatic body are explored under a lens of curiosity’, was published by Broken Sleep Books in August 2021. Her poems have appeared in The Interpreter's House, bath magg, and The Manchester Review, and her poetry features in an upcoming anthology on deviance from Toothgrinder Press. Her critical writing appeared in photography book Tilt, published by First Light.

Adrienne is poetry editor at Asylum, a radical mental health magazine that platforms a variety of voices. She works in a plant shop and studies MA Poetry at the University of East Anglia.

Charlin McIsaac is an actor, singer, writer, and general all-around funny gal based in Toronto. She has collaborated on a number of devised theatre projects and has featured in several award-winning plays and is now branching into prose writing. Manischewitz Night is her first publication. Charlin is interested in stories about women who are mischievous and gross and playful and complicated and irreverent. You can find her on Twitter @charlinmcisaac.

Adam Welch is a creative copywriter and editor based in London, where he works in the fashion industry. His fiction has appeared in Ambit, Open Pen, Short Fiction, Shooter and Salt's Best British Short Stories 2019. He was highly commended in the 2020 University of Essex / Short Fiction Prize, longlisted in the 2018 London Short Story Prize and one of three Arvon/Jerwood fiction mentees for 2019/20. He’s currently working on a collection of short stories set in and around commercial and hyper-capitalist spaces alongside his first novel and a number of screenwriting projects. His website is http://www.adamwelchwriter.com

Cait Atherton was born on the myth-drenched Isle of Man. Her childhood rained with stories of folklore and family. A drier adult life in Cambridge as a medical scientist came to an end with a posting to Thailand, the rain became a monsoon immersing her in Eastern philosophy with voyages to India, Nepal, Tibet. Along the way she realised that she’d like to pour her own small offering into to the great ocean of words. Much failure and some success. It’s not the winning, it’s knowing that an offering has been accepted. Thank you Bridport.

Gemma Cooper-Novack’s debut poetry collection We Might As Well Be Underwater (Unsolicited Press, 2017) was a finalist for the Central New York Book Award. She’s published chapbooks with Warren Tales (Too Much Like a Landscape) and The Head & the Hand ("Bedside Manner"). Her poetry and fiction have appeared in more than forty journals; her plays have been produced across the United States. She is a 2016 Deming Fund grantee and a doctoral candidate in literacy education at Syracuse University. Her website is www.gemmacoopernovack.com

Alana Franasiak is a writer based in Portland, Maine. She graduated from Lesley University with an MFA in Fiction. Her stories have been selected as a semi-finalist in The Raymond Carver Short Story Contest and as a finalist in The Salamander Fiction Contest. She is currently working on two novels.

Stephanie Early Green's short fiction appears or is forthcoming in Narrative Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, New Ohio Review, Juked, and elsewhere. Her work was selected by Rumaan Alam as a finalist in the 2021 Crazyhorse Fiction Prize, and she has been named a finalist in the 2021 Montana Prize for Fiction, the 2020 Halifax Ranch Fiction Prize, and others. She has been named a 2021 Fellow at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and has participated in Bread Loaf, Community of Writers, Kenyon Review, and One Story writing conferences. She is at work on a novel. Her website is https://stephanieearlygreen.com/.

Eileen O’Donoghue is a fiction writer living in south-west Ireland. Her short fiction has been shortlisted for the Fish short story prize in 2018, longlisted for the Fabula Press short story contest in 2017, and highly commended in the Michael Terence short story competition in 2021. Her stories have been published in The Quarryman, the literary journal of University College Cork in 2017, 2018 and 2021. She has an MA from UCC and has just submitted her thesis for an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick. She is currently working on her first novel. Twitter: @Eilertweets1

Dhyanna Raffi-David lives in a Southern California with her three children, a vegetable garden, and a shimmer of hummingbirds. She received her MFA in creative writing from the Iowa Writers Workshop and is currently working on a short story collection.

Stevie Reeves is the trumpet playing editor of a literary magazine. She writes and lives in Surrey with her husband, son and a deaf French bulldog. She has lived and studied in the USA and identifies herself as transatlantic. She studied English Literature and Language at Oxford University and is currently working on the Creative Writing Programme with New Writing South. Stevie also writes poetry and her poems have been published and listed for awards by Shoreham Wordfest, Mslexia Women’s Poetry Competition and Prole Pamphlet Competition. She is currently finishing her novel and working on a collection of short stories.

T.C. Smith received his MFA from the University of Washington. A sixth generation Texan, he now makes his home in the Pacific Northwest. In 2019, an excerpt from his novel, No Man’s Land, was longlisted for the Stockholm First Pages Prize. ‘Minotaur’, from the same novel, is forthcoming in Gargoyle Literary Magazine. The Bridport Prize marks his fiction debut. Other interests include film (M.A., University of Southern California), Scandinavian Languages and Literature (M.A., University of Washington), hiking in the Cascade Mountains, and reading (classic narrative fiction, autobiography, film/world history 1900-1929). He currently works for the University of Washington Libraries.

Greta Stoddart’s first book of poems At Home in the Dark (Anvil) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 2002. Her second, Salvation Jane (Anvil), was shortlisted for the Costa Book Award 2008 and third, Alive Alive O (Bloodaxe, 2015), was shortlisted for the Roehampton Prize 2016 with a poem shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem. Her latest work, Who’s there?, broadcast on Radio 4 was BBC Pick of the Week and shortlisted for the 2017 Ted Hughes Award. Her new book Fool will be published by Bloodaxe in 2022. The Leavetaking is her first published short story. She lives in Devon and teaches for the Poetry School.

Hannah Sutherland is a writer from the North-East of Scotland. Her debut novel, Life Lessons, was longlisted in Helen Lederer’s Comedy Women in Print Award 2021 in the unpublished category. She placed 2nd in the Writing East Midland’s Aurora Awards 2020 and won Cranked Anvil’s Flash Fiction Prize. Her Novella-in-Flash, Small Things, placed Highly Commended in the Bath Novella-in-Flash Award 2021 and will be published later in the year by Ad Hoc Fiction. She’s a selective Curtis Brown Creative alumina and is studying for her MFA in Creative Writing at the Manchester Writing School. She tweets at @HannahWrites88.

Kathy Tierney is a writer who lives in Australia and has poetry and creative non-fiction published in various journals. She has won three poetry awards; The 2004 Newcastle Poetry Prize-local (joint first prize), The 2005 Dennis Butler Memorial Award: Free Form Poetry (1st prize) and the Bessie Jennings Award Literary Writing Competition 2017 (2nd prize). She has also won a commended award for a short story in the 2007 Roland Robinson Literary Award. She has an Associate Degree of Creative Writing from Southern Cross University, and a Bachelor of Creative Writing with Distinction from Deakin University, Australia.

P.C. Verrone is a writer, theatrical artist, and storyteller born and raised in Los Angeles, California. His plays have been presented by the Blank Theater, Center Theatre Group, Custom Made Theater, and Native Voices. He was awarded a 2021-22 Many Voices Fellowship at the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is a participant in the inaugural Black Creatives Revision Workshop, a collaboration between We Need Diverse Books and Penguin Random House. He graduated from Harvard University. He is currently working on a theatrical commission from the Urbanite Theater as well as his debut novel.

Miranda Overett is a writer of odd experiences - from teaching toddlers in Thailand, to making schedules for film shoots in London, and dabbling in stand-up comedy in Budapest. Today, she still lives in her adopted home of Hungary, and has had articles, poetry and flash fiction published in the Huffington Post, the Masters Review, Sad Girls Club, Paragraph Planet, and more. She has recently completed an MA in Creative Writing, and is currently working on her first novel.

Angela Wipperman grew up in Essex and now lives and works in London. She has published short fiction in Litro and elsewhere, has been shortlisted for the Retreat West First Chapters competition, and is working on her first novel. She is an alumnus of the 2020 Faber Academy novel writing course. Outside of her fiction writing she is a science writer and communicator.

Andrew Boulton is a lecturer in creative advertising and creative writing at the University of Lincoln. He is the author of a bestselling book on copywriting and a children’s book called Adele Writes an Ad. His stories have been accepted and published in journals including Retreat West, Lunate Fiction, Flash Fiction Magazine, Tiny Molecules, Spelk, Reflex, Bath Flash Fiction anthology, Cranked Anvil and Storgy. He lives in Nottingham with his wife, daughter and a chubby cat. Find him on twitter: @boultini

Matt Buttell-Rogers is a writer and copy editor from north London, where he lives with his husband. He studied Creative Studies in English at Bath Spa University and has been working as a copywriter and editor across various sectors and industries since graduating in 2006. His main passions are reading, writing, and playing board games; he runs his own book club and owns over 120 tabletop games. He has previously written for Gay Times, the Guardian, Zatu Games, Ticketmaster and Sky. He is currently working on his first novel.

Charlotte Morbey lives on a hill in rural Scotland, with her husband and two of her three children. As a community midwife she feels lucky to work with remote communities in an inspirational landscape. Having moved around southern England before relocating to Scotland, she couldn’t tell you where she is from these days. She has come back to writing in midlife after chronic illness and a change of career. Charlotte is currently editing a novel, set in the Highlands in 1923. ‘Trauma Light’ is her first published flash fiction. Find her on Twitter: @charmotwit

Mary Morrissy is the author of three novels, Mother of Pearl, The Pretender and The Rising of Bella Casey, two collections of stories, A Lazy Eye, and Prosperity Drive and is a recent convert to flash. Her work has won the Hennessy Prize (for short fiction) and a Lannan Foundation Award and has been twice nominated for the Dublin International Literary Award and shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize (now Costa). She is a journalist and teacher of creative writing and offers literary mentoring. Her website can be found at https://marymorrissy.com

Shelley Roche-Jacques’ work has appeared in magazines such as Litro, Magma, The Rialto, and The Boston Review. Her poetry pamphlet Ripening Dark was published in 2015, followed by a collection of dramatic monologues, Risk the Pier, in 2017. She is interested in the idea of balancing ‘sympathy and judgement’ in her stories and monologues, of coming at political ideas obliquely, and in creating characters with whom the reader might not feel entirely comfortable. She lives in Barnsley, Yorkshire, and lectures in Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam University.

Fiona Williams is a freelance science writer working for the pharmaceutical and health industries. She is also a copyeditor for the journal Transnational Literature. She began writing her first novel, The House of Broken Bricks, while completing an MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, and the manuscript was shortlisted for the university’s Janklow & Nesbit Prize. Born and raised in South-East London, Fiona now lives on a smallholding on the Somerset Levels. She is currently researching her second novel and hopes to embark on a PhD in Creative Writing next year. You can find her on Twitter @FeeWilliams75.

Tamara Henriques grew up in Scotland. She studied Japanese at university before moving to New York to work for Condé Nast. This was followed by a short stint at the Washington Post and a spell in the UK working in Japanese TV production. Since then, Tamara has lived in Switzerland, Japan, and Hong Kong – where she founded an eponymous fashion label for designer wellington boots. She moved back to the UK in 2016 and started Portrait of a Family at the Faber Academy Writing a Novel course in 2017. Tamara lives on a farm in the Cotswolds with her husband and has three children.

Mónica Parle was born in the Chihuahuan Desert, which she still considers the home of her heart. For over a century, her family has played hopscotch across the international border between El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. She grew up among the bayous and roller rinks of southeast Texas, and now lives in London. She is the Co-Executive Director of Forward Arts Foundation and has two novels in progress The Girl in the Glass House, which was named the Cornerstone Long-List Award #BNA 2020, and a YA climate-themed adventure novel, which was Highly Commended in Faber’s 2018 FAB Prize.

Gemma Seltzer is a London-based writer. Her work includes the Guardian’s award-winning virtual reality film ‘Songbird,’ fictional blog ‘5am London’ and online flash fiction series ‘Speak to Strangers’ about conversations with Londoners, subsequently published by Penned in the Margins. She collaborates with dancers, photographers and older adults to create writing and storytelling projects. Gemma has written for BBC Radio 3, performed her work at the Venice Biennale and runs Write & Shine, a programme of early morning writing workshops, events and online courses. Gemma's short fiction collection ‘Ways of Living’ was published by Influx Press in July 2021. gemmaseltzer.com

Helga B Viegas was born and raised in Lisbon and moved to London fifteen years ago to find a job and learn tango. Being creative is a compulsion: in the last three years, she has finished two novels and started a short story collection, while enjoying her full-time day job in a digital innovation lab. Helga’s list of interests is long and absurd, including shadow puppetry and game theory. She has two MAs in Communications and Design from the University of Lisbon and Central Saint Martins (London) and has completed creative writing courses at City University, London. Website: hbviegas.com

Kim Squirrell grew up in Birmingham and escaped to the countryside at seventeen. She is a west-country artist and writer of Caribbean/Irish heritage with almost as many job titles as birthdays. Publication includes: ‘Poetry Review,’ ‘Riptide,’ ‘Stand,’ and the Out of Bounds anthology (Bloodaxe 2012). In 2018 she completed a Creative Writing MA at Exeter, was shortlisted for the Comma Press Dinesh Allirajah prize and commissioned to write for the 'Resist’ anthology (Comma Press 2019). In crafting a long narrative poem for her dissertation, she acquired the tools to write ‘Shale’, a story conceived twenty-six years ago on the Exe estuary.

Courtney Conrad is a Jamaican poet. Her poetry explores the intersectional politics of race, religion, gender, sexuality and migration. She is a current member of Malika's Poetry Kitchen and the London Library Emerging Writers Programme. She is an alumna of the Roundhouse Poetry Collective. Her poems have appeared in The White Review, Magma Poetry, Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, Stand Magazine, and Poetry Wales and anthologised by Bad Betty Press and Anamot Press. She was shortlisted for The White Review Poet's Prize 2020 and longlisted for the Rebecca Swift Women Poets’ Prize 2020 and The Rialto Nature and Place Poetry Competition.