2024

Rosalind Easton is a poet and teacher from South East London. After a first degree in English, she trained as a dancer and spent several years teaching ballet, modern and tap before returning to university for her PGCE and MA. Her debut pamphlet Black Mascara (Waterproof) was a winner in the Poetry Business International Book & Pamphlet Competition in 2020, and her second Man Overboard won the Paper Swans Press Pamphlet Prize in 2022. She received her PhD in English Literature from Birkbeck College, University of London in 2021.

Melissa Knox Evans grew up in Rome and currently lives in Oxford, UK. Her poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in New York Quarterly, Barzakh Magazine, Stoneboat Literary Journal, Broad River Review, and elsewhere. She received a Pushcart nomination in 2023, placed third in the Plaza Prize in Poetry (2024) and was a finalist in the Rash Award in Poetry (2024). Evans is creative director of science and arts publication, Seisma Magazine.

Chrissy Banks is a one-time counsellor and trainer. She lives in Exeter, runs poetry reading groups and co-hosts Uncut Poets monthly live and online. Her second collection is The Uninvited (Indigo Dreams 2019) and a pamphlet Frank (Smith Doorstop 2021) from the Poetry Business. Competition commendations include the Teignmouth and Winchester Poetry Competitions 2021. She was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize 2021 and Teignmouth’s Devon Poets prize, 2023 and long listed for the Live Canon Open and Waltham Forest Competitions in 2022. Poems also in many journals and anthologies. Recent reviews in the High Window.

Francesca Duffield is a writer and artist from the English Midlands now living in Lewes, East Sussex. She has poems published in the London Independent Story Prize ‘Rising Stars’ Anthology 2023, the 2023 and 2024 anthologies by Artemisia Arts and Mosaique Press, three anthologies of the ‘Bourne to Write’ writers group, and ‘Ingenue Magazine’. She participated in a European translations project with the poet John Eliot and Mosaique Press, and her poem translated into Romanian will be included in the book ‘Cross-Currents 2’. She has worked as an illustrator and art lecturer, and when not writing, creates paintings and prints.

Catherine Wilson Garry is a poet and writer. Her debut poetry pamphlet Another Word for Home is Blackbird was published in 2023 by Stewed Rhubarb Press. Her writing has been commissioned by BBC Radio 4 and the British National Gallery. She is the winner of the Janet Coats Memorial Prize and highly commended by the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award 2024. In 2023, she was selected as one of The London Library’s Emerging Writers. She is also part of the team behind Push the Boat Out Festival, Edinburgh’s International Poetry Festival, where she runs their monthly night Rock the Boat.

Roshni Goyate is a poet, a mother, a proud daughter of Indian immigrants and founder of Tenderly, where she runs writing workshops for people to come back to their creative selves. She’s part of the 4 BROWN GIRLS WHO WRITE collective, and has published a pamphlet called Shadow Work, in the 4 BROWN GIRLS WHO WRITE pamphlet collection (Rough Trade Books 2020). Her work has also been included in Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World, edited by Padraig O’Tuama (Canongate 2022). Roshni hails from north-west London and spends her time between Muscat and London. @roshnigoyate @tenderly.xyz @4browngirlswhowrite

Luisa A. Igloria is the author of Caulbearer (Immigrant Writing Series Prize, Black Lawrence Press, 2024), Maps for Migrants and Ghosts (Co-Winner, 2019 Crab Orchard Open Poetry Prize), 12 other books, and 4 chapbooks. She is lead editor, with co-editors Aileen Cassinetto and Jeremy S. Hoffman, of Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the U.S. (Paloma Press, 2023). Originally from Baguio City, she makes her home in Norfolk VA where she is the Louis I. Jaffe and University Professor of English and Creative Writing at Old Dominion University’s MFA Creative Writing Program. Luisa is the 20th Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia (2020-22), Emerita. During her term, the Academy of American Poets awarded her a 2021 Poet Laureate Fellowship. www.luisaigloria.com

Joanne Key lives in Cheshire. Completely in love with poetry and short stories, she writes every day. Her poetry has been published in various places and won a number of prizes, including: second prize in the National Poetry Competition, 2014; first prize in the Hippocrates Open Prize, 2018; first prize in Buzzwords Prize, 2020 and first prize in the Working Class Nature Writing Prize, 2021. Her work has been shortlisted in several competitions, including The Bridport Prize, and has also been highly commended or commended in others. She is also a past winner of the Mslexia Short Story Competition.

Clare Labrador is a writer from the Philippines. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Creative Writing from the Ateneo de Manila University. Her work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Booth, and Waxwing.

Shanna McGoldrick is a journalist who grew up in Lancashire and now lives in Manchester. She recently started writing poems, inconsistently, while her young son naps or when the rest of the house is asleep. The advantage of this approach is that tiredness occasionally brings with it a strange kind of creative clarity. The disadvantage is that her house is a mess and she is permanently behind on everything. She was the winner of the 2023 Passionfruit Poetry Prize.

Tom McLaughlin is a Derry-born poet who grew up on both sides of the Irish border. His debut pamphlet, Open Houses, was published in 2021 with Marble Press. He completed an MA in Creative Writing, with Distinction, at Royal Holloway and is a practice-based PhD candidate at Surrey University. His poems have recently featured in anthologies by Arachne Press and Broken Sleep, and he won first prize in Cannon's Mouth 2024 Sonnet or Not Competition. You can find out more at https://tommclaughlin.uk/

Charlotte Salkind is a writer and documentary filmmaker and lives in London. She is one of the Genesis Foundation’s ten Emerging Writers for 2024-25 and is working on her first collection. She has been shortlisted previously for the Bridport Prize and was a finalist in the Troubadour International Poetry Prize. She has directed and produced on documentary series for National Geographic, Netflix and ITV, and her research for documentaries has been nominated for an Emmy Award.

Amy Ward's poetry has been four-times nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Poetry London, Magma, Spelt, VerseVille, Mslexia, The Frogmore Papers, Agenda, Penumbra, among others. She's been commended in the National Poetry Competition, Mslexia's Pamphlet and Poetry competitions, the Indigo Poetry Competition, The Frogmore, Troubadour and Café Writers. Ward took part in the Places of Poetry Project for England and Wales; in partnership with the Ordnance Survey, The Poetry Society and National Poetry Day. She's a finalist for the Aesthetica Writing Award and a selection of her poetry has been showcased in the Aeolian Harp Series.

Joe Bedford is an author from Doncaster, UK. His short stories have been published widely, including in 3:AM, Evening Standard, Litro and elsewhere. His stories have also won numerous awards including the Leicester Writes Prize, as well as being longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, the Fish Short Story Prize and the ALCS Tom-Gallon Award among others. Since 2021 he has curated Writers on Research – an ongoing craft interview series exploring the research methods of over fifty contemporary authors. His debut novel A Bad Decade for Good People was published by Parthian Books in Summer 2023.

Andrew Laurence has been a barrister, puppeteer, actor, and head of a top London PR agency. He studied at the Inns of Court School of Law, the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art and has an MA in Creative Writing from Goldsmiths. In addition to short stories he has written five novels, two of which are self-published, and one acquired by a leading publisher in Italy. He is currently finishing a novel set in 1973 about a small-town Logan Roy bent on making millions when government policy triggers a housebuilding boom. Andrew lives in South London.

T.N. Eyer is an ex-lawyer who has happily transitioned to writing fiction full time. Her first novel, Finding Meaning in the Age of Immortality, was published by Stillhouse Press in 2023. Her short fiction has appeared in a handful of literary magazines and anthologies, and her story "Date of Death" was listed as a Distinguished Story in Best American Short Stories 2022. In addition to writing, she enjoys hiking, traveling, and playing Dance Dance Revolution. She lives in Pittsburgh with her husband and daughter. Find her on Instagram @ tneyerwriter and www.tneyer.com

Houssam Alissa is the son of immigrants, born in London to an Iraqi GP and an Indian college lecturer. From a young age, they read him the greats (Chicken Licken, Puddle Lane, etc); fostering in him an early love of reading. Despite their entirely sensible pleas for him to consider medicine, he went on to study English at the University of Nottingham. He spent a few years teaching English in Russia before returning to the UK where he succeeded in selling his soul to a corporation in whose servitude he remains today. He lives in Edinburgh, and occasionally writes things.

CJ Bowman is a doctor who lives and works in London. He also holds a Masters-of-Arts in Creative Writing. Thump Thump is his first short story to be published. Find him on Instagram @conor.bowman

Linnhe Harrison was born in Chester in 1977 and spent her home-ed childhood between North Wales and the Lake District. She now lives in Kirkby Stephen, Cumbria with her musician husband and two children. Entirely self-taught, Linnhe worked as an animator and as a sailing instructor prior to moving into graphic design and marketing. Having previously dabbled in shorter forms of creative writing, she started working on what would become her debut novel in the summer of 2023. Dark, speculative and dystopian, The Incredible Machines of Thinkery: Outpost 9 was self-published in July 2024.

Kenneth Havey was born in London and began writing at the age of 55, an old dog stirred to new tricks by the cumulative inspiration of years of reading well. He describes his experience of writing as a daily oscillation between promise and deflation, and as a welcome, if consistently unappeasable, compulsion. The author of numerous short stories, Kenneth is currently writing two novels which draw, thematically, on his past experiences of mental illness; he always works on at least two stories at the same time. Kenneth lives with his stoical wife and their arthritic terrier in the foothills of Crete’s Dikti Mountains.

Kat Nugent is a writer and editorial consultant living in north London. She grew up between Jakarta, Indonesia and Perth, Australia before moving to Scotland to study English Literature and History at the University of Edinburgh. She completed an MA in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths University and in 2023, her work was longlisted for the Pat Kavanagh Prize. She is currently working on her first novel.

Emily Rinkema lives and writes in northern Vermont, USA. Her writing has recently appeared in The Sun Magazine, SmokeLong Quarterly, and X-R-A-Y Lit, and she has stories in the Best American Nonrequired Reading, Bath Flash and Oxford Flash anthologies. You can read her work on her website https://emilyrinkema.wixsite.com/my-site or follow her on X or IG (@emilyrinkema).

Anna Round grew up in Belfast and Glasgow and studied English at Oxford University before moving to London. She now lives in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the North East of England, where she works in research. Her short stories have appeared in the Fish anthology, the 2023 Best Mystery Stories of the Year collection, the Hammond House anthology and elsewhere. She is a former winner of the Briar Cliff and Sid Chaplin short story awards and is currently working on a novel. When not writing she enjoys running very long distances, snowboarding, and music (especially Beethoven and Bruce Springsteen).

John Tait is a Canadian-American writer whose stories have appeared in Narrative, Crazyhorse, Prairie Schooner, Southwest Review, and The Sun and have won prizes such as the Tobias Wolff Award, the Rick Demarinis Fiction Award, and the H.E. Francis Award for Fiction. He is an Associate Professor of Fiction at the University of North Texas.

Annabel White is a short story writer based in London. Her work was shortlisted for the Letter Review Prize 2023 and has been published in Mslexia, Popshot and Litro. She is a member of the London Library’s Emerging Writers Programme 2024 where she is working on a short story collection exploring the grossness of girlhood, covering themes such as sex, pressure, body image and the internet.

Angela Wipperman lives in London. She has published short fiction in Litro, The Forge, and elsewhere. She placed third in the 2021 Bridport prize for Flash Fiction and was shortlisted for the Retreat West first chapters prize. She is writing her first novel.

Mike Kilgannon is an English teacher and dad living in Sheffield. He grew up in St Helens, Merseyside and has been scribbling in secret ever since. His flash fiction piece The Hercules Reopened won second place in the Bridport Prize in 2019. Another flash fiction piece, To Dust, won third place in the 2022 New Writers competition.

Jaime Gill is a British-born writer living in Cambodia. His stories have appeared in Litro, The Phare, Fiction Attic, Good Life Review, Scribes, and more. He won the 2024 Honeybee Literature Prize for Short Story, Berlin Literary Review’s 2024 Best Flash Fiction award, and is a nominee for Best of The Net 2024. He’s also won or been a finalist for awards including New Writers 2024, the Bridport Prize, Flash405, Masters Review, and the Bath Short Story Award. He’s currently working on a novel, script, and far, far too many stories. More at www.jaimegill.com.

Karen Whitelaw’s short stories have been published internationally in literary journals and anthologies, including Overland, Mascara, Meniscus, F(r)iction, Award Winning Australian Writing, Bath Flash Fiction 2023, Oxford Flash Fiction 2023 and NFFD Anthology 2024. Her prize-winning flash fiction has been adapted for short film, animation and a variety of multi-media platforms. She writes, lives and gains inspiration in and beside the ocean in Newcastle, Australia.

Sally Curtis lives close to the sea and is a burnt-out teacher, happy hypnotherapist, and would-be novelist. She has a number of micros, flash fictions and short stories published online and in paper form and has been successful in many competitions including winning the Retreat West Micro-fiction prize and Flash Fiction prize, Writing Magazine’s 500 word, and placed with Flash 500. Recently, one of her stories was featured on BBC Uploads. Sally presented a Flash Fiction workshop at the Bournemouth Writing Festival last year and hopes to do so again this year. At present, she is writing a Novella-in-Flash. https://www.facebook.com/sallywritesstories

Emma Levin is a student from London, currently studying English Literature in Edinburgh. She writes short stories and plays with mysterious and unsettling themes, and in 2024 placed in the National Theatre New Views competition, with her short play about the pressures of internet fame receiving a staged reading. Her main inspirations come from modernist novels and the gothic, and at present she is working on writing a full length theatre play.

Mairghread McLundie has a background in computing science and design/craft. In 2006 she completed a Ph.D. examining aspects of creative processes and was an academic researcher at Glasgow School of Art’s Digital Design Studio until 2008. In 2009 she began attending courses in creative writing (poetry and fiction) at the University of Glasgow’s Centre for Open Studies. Her work has been published in various anthologies, and in 2019 she was shortlisted for the Wigtown Poetry Prize and longlisted in the National Poetry Competition. She lives near Glasgow in an old stone house with her husband and many, many spiders.

Adam Z. Robinson is a theatre writer, performer and author of flash fiction. His original theatre credits include: Unhomely (2024), Belle and Mary (2021), Upon the Stair (2020), Smile Club (co-written with Andrea Heaton, 2020) and Shivers (2018). In flash fiction, in 2023 his story ‘Favouritism’ won joint first place in The Letter Review’s flash fiction competition, his story ‘Assembly Line’ was published in the Bath Flash Fiction Anthology and his story ‘God Save the King’ was highly commended in the Bridport Prize. Adam is the host of The Ghost Story Book Club podcast. Find him on X @adam_zed and Instagram @adam__ zed

Alison Wassell is a writer of short and very short fiction from St. Helens, Merseyside, UK. Her work has been published by Fictive Dream, National Flash Fiction Day, FlashFlood Journal, The Disappointed Housewife, Gooseberry Pie, Books Ireland and elsewhere. She has twice been shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award. She was part of the judging team for the 2024 National Flash Fiction Day Micro Competition. She has no plans whatsoever to write a novel and wishes people would take flash fiction more seriously. Find her on Twitter/X and Instagram/Threads @lilysslave

Laura Allsop is a writer and editor with a specialism in art and culture. She has written on art and film for titles including The Guardian, Time Out, AnOther Magazine, ArtReview and Frieze, among many others, and edited books about fashion, architecture and interiors, and travel for Berlin publishers, gestalten. Laura completed an MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck, University of London, in 2010 and has a BA in English Literature from the University of Cambridge. She lives in London with her family; between 2019 and 2020 she lived in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Anna Dempsey is a writer and teacher from Florida, now living in London. She’s working on a PhD in Creative Writing and Grieving at Bath Spa University and Bristol University. Anna won the 2019 Costa Short Story Award and was long-listed for the Curtis Brown Discoveries Prize. She teaches creative writing with The Writing Setand co-runs Path2Pen, a creative hiking group she started with her best friend. Website: annadempsey.me

Charlotte Cole is a writer of horror and surrealist fiction. She writes on female identity, sexuality, and relationships between women. Originally starting her career in fashion editorial, Charlotte then moved into digital retail, before landing in the non-profit arts sector. She is currently completing an MA in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths and works at Chisenhale Gallery in East London. Babygirl is Charlotte’s first novel. Instagram: @cjlcole, Substack: @Ad Infinitum

Alison Theresa Gibson grew up in Canberra, the illusive capital of Australia, and currently lives in Birmingham, UK. She has stories published in a number of places, including Spelk, Litro, Mechanics' Institute Review, Meanjin, Sunlight Press, and Every Day Fiction. She was nominated for Best Small Fictions in 2021 and Best of the Net in 2019. She completed her MA in Creative Writing at University of Birmingham in 2021. Bound in Shallows is a work in progress, and her fifth (all unpublished!) novel. Find her @byAlisonTheresa and alisontheresa.com

Mónica Ibarra Parle grew up shuttling between the bayous of southeast Texas and her grandparents’ house in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. She has three novels in progress (two lit novels and a YA) and won the 2022 Mslexia Short Story Competition. Her work has also been short-listed for the 2021 Bridport Peggy Chapman First Writing Award, the 2021 Wasafiri Queen Mary Prize, and highly commended in Faber’s 2018 Fab Prize. She now lives in London and is the Co-Executive Director of Forward Arts Foundation (the Forward Prizes and National Poetry Day) and Associate Director of El Nuevo Sol British Latinx writers.

Sally Curtis lives close to the sea and is a burnt-out teacher, happy hypnotherapist, and would-be novelist. She has a number of micros, flash fictions and short stories published online and in paper form and has been successful in many competitions including winning the Retreat West Micro-fiction prize and Flash Fiction prize, Writing Magazine’s 500 word, and placed with Flash 500. Recently, one of her stories was featured on BBC Uploads. Sally presented a Flash Fiction workshop at the Bournemouth Writing Festival last year and hopes to do so again this year. At present, she is writing a Novella-in-Flash. https://www.facebook.com/sallywritesstories

Emma Levin is a student from London, currently studying English Literature in Edinburgh. She writes short stories and plays with mysterious and unsettling themes, and in 2024 placed in the National Theatre New Views competition, with her short play about the pressures of internet fame receiving a staged reading. Her main inspirations come from modernist novels and the gothic, and at present she is working on writing a full length theatre play.