Richard Smyth writes for the Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement and the New Statesman, among others, and lives in Bradford with his wife and cat.
Stacey Sampson is an actor, writer, facilitator and mother from South Yorkshire. She was recipient of the inaugral Arvon Award in 2013, followed by a Northern Writers' Award in 2016. Her novel went on to win the Mslexia Children's Novel Competition. She is represented by Hardman & Swainson Literary Agency.
Isabella Sharp is 17, from York, and aspires to be a novelist and screenwriter.
John Schoneboom is a novelist and playwright from New York who has been living in Newcastle upon Tyne since 2010. His play Dreams of Jimmy Bannon won the Artist Fellowship Award from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and was followed by a series of mainly short plays, mostly for Off Off Broadway venues in Manhattan.
Jessica has always enjoyed writing, but it wasn't until she began studying at the National Glass Centre that she had the idea for her first book, a children's fantasy-adventure. Upon graduating in 2009, she began writing The Glass Blower's Apprentice: The Fourth Diamond using her knowledge and passion for her subject, along with a little artistic licence.
Jennifer Szandrowska is a 17 year old A level student hoping to study English Literature and Classics at university. She started writing as a hobby at age 14, and focuses mainly on poetry and short stories.
Degna Stone is a Midlander in self-imposed exile. She visited Newcastle for the summer in 1999 and never managed to go home. She’s a regular performer on the North East spoken word scene and won a Northern Promise Award for her poetry in 2010. ID on Tyne Press published her chapbook, Between the Floorboards, in 2010.
Jasmine is a poet from West Yorkshire. She is currently Vice Chancellor's Scholar for the Arts at Durham University, where she studies Education.
16-year-old Wyatt from Bishop Auckland received the inaugural Conor Robinson Award in 2015. Wyatt’s talents shone during a workshop run at the Discovery Museum in Newcastle, when he wrote poetry inspired by artefacts not normally available to the viewing public.
Paul Summers was born in Northumberland, in 1967. He now lives in tropical Central Queensland. He was founding co-editor of magazines Billy Liar and Liar Republic and a co-director of Liar Inc Ltd, responsible for facilitating countless community projects across the north of England and beyond. He has also written for TV, film, radio and theatre and has collaborated many times on mixed-media projects and public art.
Maurice Suckling writes fiction and games (recent titles include Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, Civilization VI, and Lost Words), and is also currently teaching game writing and narrative design in Upstate New York.
Diane Simpson was born in Salford and grew up in North Yorkshire. She won a Northern Promise Award in 2003, and a Royal Literary Fund Writers’ Pool bursary in 2005. Her short story, 'Isetnefret', set in ancient Egypt, was published in the journal of the Historical Novel Society, having won the Explore Prize. She is currently seeking a publisher for her first novel, The Sugar Accounts.
Dan has published five novels with Orion Publishing, and four novels with Chicken House. His 2015 novel Big Game is based on the movie starring Samuel L Jackson, and his most recent novel, Boy X, won The Essex Book Award, The Phoenix Book Award, and the Coventry Inspiration Book Award.
Alice de Smith was born in Cambridge and now lives in Newcastle upon Tyne. Her work for the theatre has been performed at Live Theatre, Newcastle, The Everyman, Liverpool and the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough. In 2007, she received a Northern Writers’ Time to Write Award for her novel, Welcome to Life. She is currently working on her second novel.
Sarah Shaw has had articles, stories and poems published in magazines including Wasafiri, Mslexia, The Yellow Room and The London Magazine. Her novel, Make It Back, about women in the Spanish Civil War and Thatcher’s Britain, was published by Tonto Books. In 2009, her stories won the Andrea Badenoch Fiction Award.
In his last full-time job, Andrew Sclater was an editor of Charles Darwin’s letters. Then he moved to Northumberland to spend more time with his own writing. In 2010, Andrew was shortlisted by Picador in the Picador Poetry Prize. His work has appeared in Alliterati, deseeded, and Magma. Poems are forthcoming in Butcher’s Dog and Shearsman.
