Meet the 2024/25 Cohort of the Emerging Writers Programme


The London Library is delighted to announce the newest cohort of its flagship Emerging Writers Programme, which supports early-career writers and is now entering its sixth year.

40 participants were selected anonymously from a field of over 1,700 applicants, a record-breaking number, by a panel of judges including crime writer, poet, short story writer, self-help author and screenwriter Sophie Hannah, playwright, poet and non-fiction writer Sabrina Mahfouz, novelist and non-fiction writer Amber Medland, novelist, poet, publisher and children’s writer Nii Ayikwei Parkes, novelist, short story writer and literary critic Chris Power and Lutyens and Rubinstein literary agents Jenny Hewson and Jane Finigan. 

The emerging writers hail from across the UK, from Sussex to South Wales, Kent to County Durham, Birmingham, Bristol and London and they span an age range from early twenties to early fifties. This year’s cohort is working on a diverse array of projects, taking us from Afghanistan to Iran, Uganda to Sierra Leone, Brazil to the Dominican Republic. They delve into untold histories and explore the present moment: gentrification in East London, social housing in North London, the life of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK and the incarceration of women around world. They explore art, colour, nature and cartography, cannibalism, witchcraft and hauntings, class comedy, murder mystery, fantasy, superhuman ability and plenty more besides.  

Of the 40 writers, six are working on non-fiction and memoir, sixteen are writing novels, three of which are for children or young adults, eight are writing for stage/screen, five are poets, four are writing short stories and one is working on a graphic novel.

The London Library’s Emerging Writers Programme is geared towards supporting writers who have not yet published a full-length work of fiction, non-fiction, collection of poems, or had a full-length work professionally produced for stage/screen. The 2024/25 Programme will run from 1 July 2024 to 30 June 2025.


Meet the 2024/25 cohort:

Vic Beswick is a writer based in South Wales, currently working on a debut novel about mental illness, memory, and hope. @vbeswickwrites

José Buera is a Caribbean/Latinx poet and essayist from the Dominican Republic currently living in London. His writing explores Caribbean identity, diaspora communities, Taino and African heritage, syncretic religions, and atypical psychology. His poetry has appeared in the Berkeley Poetry Review, Konch, Magma, Wasafiri (forthcoming), Wet Grain (forthcoming) and elsewhere. @wildkitchens

Robin Cantwell is a London-based writer with a passion for telling stories about rivalry, trauma and societal decay. He is a graduate of Oxford University, Cambridge University, the Yale Writers’ Workshop and Mercury Playwrights. He will be using his time at the London Library to write stage plays for scale.

C E Cathcart is an Irish writer and gardener based in London. She was previously the recipient of Spread the Word’s Early Career Bursary for emerging writers. She is currently working on a collection of essays that explore our relationship to nature and queerness through themes of rootedness and belonging. Instagram: @tendrils_lilee

Liz Churchill is a writer, drama-facilitator and parent-carer based in Birmingham. She writes short stories and runs a live fiction night. She is part of Writing West Midlands Room 204. Her writing has been published online by The Mechanics’ Institute Review and she has won the Scratch Books A4 Competition. Instagram: @lizrose8 | X: @LillabetRose

Heather Cutforth is from Wigan and now lives in London. Her work has appeared in Popshot Magazine, Janus Literary, and The Coalition. She is an alum of Curtis Brown Creative and the Soho Theatre Comedy Lab. Stylist magazine once recommended her Sigmund Freud joke. Instagram: heather_cutforth

Godelieve de Bree is a Dutch-American writer based in London. Her work has been published by Tate, fourteen poems and The Los Angeles Review of Books. She was a 2023 T.S. Eliot Prize Young Critic and a member of the Roundhouse Collective 22/23. X: @godelievedebree

Fionnuala Deasy works as a digital editor in museums and lives in South East London. She is writing a novel about art and anatomy set in the eighteenth century.

Olive Franklin is a writer living in London, with work in POETRY and berlin lit. X/Instagram: @usuallyolive

Jude Fransman is an academic, policy advisor and activist with an interest in communities and how they are represented. She coordinates a community-based research programme on a council estate in North London and is working on a collaborative, non-fiction account. Jude is represented by James Spackman at BKS Agency. X: @judefransman

Shona Graham is an actor/writer from the New Forest, and an alum of Old Vic Theatre Makers and INK Festival Writing Workshops, working across stage and screen. Her work has been described as ‘dark and whimsical’ and centres imperfect characters with complicated relationships to each other. @shonalucy

Will Jarvis is a scriptwriter and filmmaker. He wrote the upcoming shorts Aortic and Funeral Sandwiches and is directing and script editing the thriller Dinner, Diamonds & Death. He enjoys exploring diverse storytelling approaches, bringing fresh, non-linear perspectives to his genre-bending work in film, TV, podcasts, and theatre. @WillJarvis1996

Joe Kelly is an aspiring screenwriter interested in creating dark, strange and propulsive character studies for film. He works for the NHS as a communications officer and graduated from RSSD with an MA in Writing for Stage and Broadcast Media. He will use the programme to develop an original gothic thriller.

Dallas Koelling is a novelist and writer of short fiction, personal essays, poetry, drama and screenplays. She is about to graduate from City, University of London with an MFA in creative writing, where she focused on fiction. In 2020, she graduated from Columbia University with a BA in Spanish. Instagram: @dallaskoelling

Marcella Marx is a Brazilian writer and educator with an MFA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck. Her short stories have been longlisted for the Berlin Writing Prize (2022) and shortlisted for the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival (2024). She is currently working on her second novel, a tale about women adopting mimicry to navigate their lives.

Sharmaine Lim is a novelist and short story writer from London. She recently completed an MA in Creative Writing at UEA. Her short stories have been shortlisted and longlisted for the Bridport (2023) and Fish (2024) prizes. Her work explores gender roles under patriarchy, family relationships, and cross-cultural lives. She was formerly a tax lawyer. @sharmainelim119

Hadiru Mahdi is a writer and artist of Sierra Leonean descent. He makes music as brother portrait and enjoys collaboration across disciplines. Themes in his work include objects as vessels; the power in space and place, language and map making. He is working on a project exploring memory and movement. Instagram: @brother_portrait

Sabrina Mahtani is a British-Zambian lawyer and writer. She has worked for several human rights organisations, including Amnesty International, The Elders and the Clooney Foundation for Justice. She hosts the Women Beyond Walls podcast, exposing the harms of the over-incarceration of women worldwide and inspiring women fighting to change a broken system. X: @sabrina_mahtani | Instagram: @sabrinaonsocial | www.linkedin.com/in/sabrina-mahtani

Alissa Mears teaches writing at the American School in London. A recovering travel writer, she is at work on a collection of essays about parenting her four sons, teaching, and holding it together for the next generation. Her second project is a feminist retelling of Prometheus. Instagram: @lissmears |X: @AlissaHMears | Substack: https://www.alissamears.com/

Emma Mitchell is a Kent-based writer, comedian and brand strategist. Her interdisciplinary work centres on the female body and its relationship to culture, material experience and selfhood. She employs experimental creative practices and hybrid forms to express lost and marginalised female voices from history, principally those of eighteenth-century sex workers. https://www.linkedin.com/in/emma-mitchell-b3783411/

Olja Mladjenovic is a writer, actor (as Olivia Mark), artist and presenter. As a Bosnian refugee, her writing explores themes of identity, home, and the psychological impact of immigration. She is an award-winning author, poet, playwright and screenwriter. @oljamlad

Melina Namdar is a British Iranian writer and director. In 2022, she received the National Theatre/Peter Shaffer Commission with Tamasha Theatre. Her writing has been long-listed for the BBC Script Room and The Women’s Prize for Playwriting. Instagram: @melinathatsme | X: @melinanamdar

Gift Nyoni is a Zimbabwean-born writer and lawyer. His writing has been longlisted for the Bath Novel Award and BPA First Novel award. His short story, The Ritual Seat of the King, won the 2021 Guardian 4th Estate 4thWrite Prize. He is working on a collection of migrant love stories. Instagram: @literary_womble

Fiona O’Brien is a writer, lecturer and human rights campaigner. Formerly a foreign correspondent, she is currently the UK director of Reporters Without Borders and is working on a novel about motherhood and spiritual healing.

Erin Peacock is a writer of darkly funny, spiky literary fiction. Originally from Peterborough, she now lives in Bristol where she completed a MA in Creative Writing. She is driven to uncover our universal foibles through close observation and sly humour, often interrogating class identity, family dynamics and, mostly, death. X: @erinpwrites

c. f. prior is an art worker, writer and editor. They produce texts, events and objects guided by a preoccupation with hospitality, mutual dependence and loss and are one fifth of the writing collective We Don’t Write Alone. Substack: @cfprior

Holly Redshaw is a musician and bassoonist. Alongside her work as a performer, Holly teaches children of all ages alongside working in community and SEND settings. She has had poetry published in collections by Pareidolia Literary, Pile Press and Unpublishable Zine and is currently working on her debut novel. Instagram: @hol_red | X: @hollyredshaw

DC Restaino is a freelance editor and writer. His work has appeared online and in print at Funicular Magazine, SamFiftyFour, NOIA Magazine, Mulberry Lit and elsewhere, and was runner-up in the 2022 Dillydoun Review Flash Fiction Prize. Instagram: @dcrestaino

Lucie Richter-Mahr is a poet and researcher. Her work has appeared in Magma, Propel Magazine, and Lighthouse Journal, and was shortlisted for the 2024 Aesthetica Creative Writing Award. She is currently working on her first poetry pamphlet.

Kate Roche is an emerging playwright and won Second Place in the Alpine Fellowship Theatre Prize 2023. She has had two short plays staged at the Tower Theatre. She is also Press and Public Affairs Manager for the Society of London Theatre & UK Theatre, and a Trustee at Theatre Deli.

Barry Sadid is an Afghan-British writer from South London, working on memory and oral history in an Afghan context. X: @barrysadid

Maxine Sibhiwana is a London-based poet and writer from Uganda. Her work explores themes of love, shame and questioning religious rituals, and has been published in Notebook by MUBI, Die Quieter Please, Lolwe and the James Currey Anthology of African Literature. Instagram: @maxinetheprincess on Instagram | X: @maxinethepoet

Audrey Slade is a British-American writer living in London.  Following a career in the banking and non-profit sectors, she began writing historical fiction. She has completed a novel spanning both world wars and a novella set in 1990s New York. X: @Audrey_N_Slade

Avantika Taneja (Avanti) is a facilitator, project manager and workshop designer in the educational charity sector. Her middle-grade writing journey began with the Megaphone scheme in 2016. She has contributed a number of short stories to Aquila children’s magazine, an educational programme and BBC school radio. Her writing, like her spirit, spans many places. X: @Avanti_Taneja

Nusrath Tapadar is a Bengali Muslim actor, writer and comedian. She began writing whilst studying English at the University of Cambridge. She then trained at the Oxford School of Drama. Nusrath recently finished writing for ITV X’s Piglets, and is currently writing a commissioned short treatment of her sitcom, Chicken Shop.

Kelly Vassie is a Brighton-based artist with a background in theatre and philosophy of science. Her graphic novel-in-progress From the Bones of Old Horses is a fictional memoir told from the perspective of the colour Prussian Blue. It has been longlisted for both the First Graphic Novel Award and LDC Prize. Instagram: from_the_bones_of_old_horses | kellyvassie.com

Abby Walker is a County Durham writer, currently in her final year of an MFA with Manchester Writing School. Her work-in-progress is a gothic horror, haunted house novel set in the post-War North East. Instagram: @abbyjaywrites

Nathanael Wheatcroft-Brown is a writer from the North of England. He completed his BA in Filmmaking and his MA in Creative Writing, Publishing and Editing. He is currently working on a queer, Northern, working-class YA novel. Instagram: @bookofnate

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 working on a collection of stories that explores the grossness of girlhood, covering themes such as sex, pressure, body image and the internet. X: @annabelwh1te

Emma Zipfel is a teacher, writer, and lifelong Londoner. Her contemporary YA stories explore the challenges of teenage life with equal measures of humour and darkness. She is inspired by beautiful descriptions of nature, everyday city settings, and liminal spaces where anything feels possible. Instagram: @e.zwords

 

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Jane Finigan has been an agent at Lutyens and Rubenstein since 2006, becoming a full partner and co-owner of the agency in 2023. Her fiction, non-fiction and food authors include Ned Beauman, Meera Sodha and Claire Fuller and authors she represents have won or been nominated for multiple awards including the Man Booker Prize, the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Costa Prize, the Ondaatje Prize and been selected for Granta’s Best Young British Novelists.
 

Sophie Hannah is a bestselling crime writer whose books have sold millions of copies worldwide. She won the UK National Book Awards Crime Novel of the Year prize in 2013 and the Dagger in the Library Award in 2023. She is the author of the new series of Hercule Poirot continuation novels, commissioned by Agatha Christie's family and her murder mystery musical, ‘The Mystery of Mr E’ is available on Amazon Prime. She is also a bestselling poet who has been shortlisted for the TS Eliot Award, a self-help writer, creator and host of the podcast How To Hold a Grudge, and the founder of the Dream Author coaching programme for writers. She is an Honorary Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge.
 

Jenny Hewson joined Lutyens and Rubinstein in 2019, moving across from Rogers, Coleridge & White where she started out as an agent in 2010. She represents a wide range of award winning and bestselling fiction and non-fiction authors from around the world, including Sarah Perry, Melissa Harrison and Christos Tsiolkas. Authors she works with have won or been nominated for awards including the Booker Prize, the Folio Prize, the Women’s Prize, the Costa Novel Award, the Wainwright Prize, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.
 

Sabrina Mahfouz FRSL is a writer and performer, raised in London and Cairo. She's worked in theatre for over a decade. Her cross-genre show A History of Water in the Middle East played at the Royal Court Theatre and she was an inaugural writer-in-residence at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, co-writing an adaptation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Her debut non-fiction book is These Bodies of Water: Notes on the British Empire, the Middle East and Where We Meet. Her poetry collection, How You Might Know Me (Out-Spoken Press), was a 2017 Guardian Best Summer Read and she was an essay contributor to the award-winning anthology The Good Immigrant (Unbound). Sabrina has edited anthologies including The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write (Saqi), which was a 2017 Guardian Book of the Year.
 

Amber Medland’s forthcoming book Attention Seeker: The Truth About ADHD will be published by Dialogue Books in Spring 2025. Her debut novel Wild Pets was published by Faber in 2021. Since then, she has written for various publications including The New Yorker, The Paris Review and the London Review of Books. She was on the London Library Emerging Writers Programme in its first year.
 

Nii Ayikweii Parkes is a Ghanaian-British producer, social commentator and writer who has won acclaim as a children's author, poet, broadcaster and novelist. Winner of multiple international awards including Ghana’s ACRAG award, he is the Senior Editor at flipped eye publishing, a trustee of the Caine Prize and serves on the editorial board of World Literature Today. He has served as a judge for literature prizes including the Commonwealth Prize, the NSK Neustadt Prize and the Harvill Secker Young Translators’ Prize. He is a fellow of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University and his latest book is Azúcar, a novel.
 

Chris Power is the author of Mothers, a collection of short stories, and the novel A Lonely Man. His fiction has appeared in the Stinging Fly, Granta and the Dublin Review. He has written for the Guardian, London Review of Books, Sunday Times, New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He presents Open Book on BBC Radio 4 and is currently working on a novel.

 

Meet the 2023/24 Cohort of the Emerging Writers Programme

We are delighted to announce the newest cohort of our Emerging Writers Programme, which supports early-career writers and is now entering its fifth year.

40 participants were selected from a field of almost 1,400 applicants, a record-breaking number, by a panel of judges comprising, poet and playwright Caroline Bird, screenwriter and playwright Moira Buffini, non-fiction writer Travis Elborough, novelist and short story writer Zoe Gilbert, novelist Ayisha Malik, and literary agents at Aitken Alexander Emma Paterson and Chris Wellbelove.

The emerging writers hail from across the UK, from Edinburgh to Brighton, including Northern Ireland and Wales, spanning an age range from early twenties to early seventies. This year’s cohort is working on a diverse array of projects, taking us from Iraq to Hong Kong, India to Ukraine, gothic fairytales to murder mystery, Haitian revolution sci-fi to time-travelling ninjas, cheese, wine, lotteries and luxury, cannibalism, hirsutism, and kleptomania. Also, for the first time, the programme welcomes two new genres: food writing and translation.

Of the 40 writers, nine are working on non-fiction, including five memoirs and three food writing projects. Eight are novelists, seven are writing for stage/screen, five are poets, five are writing for children or YA, four are short story writers and two are working on translations.

Get to know our 2023/24 Emerging Writers:

AD Aaba Atach is a media and communication strategist, with a background in politics and human rights. A Clarendon Scholar at the University of Oxford, she studies the contemporary Middle East. She was a finalist for the #MerkyBooks and Penguin Random House UK's New Writers' Competition in 2019. @IAmAnaDiamond 

Sara Aghlani is an Indian Iranian artist living in London. Her background is in film and television. Recently she has undertaken various illustration courses and is currently developing a collection of poetry. Instagram: @saltypheasant 

Dr Noga Applebaum is a Jewish writer and lecturer specialising in children’s literature. She is twice winner of the London Writers Short Story competition and has published a monograph on representations of technology in young adult fiction. She is working on a YA novel set in the Hasidic community. 

Carole Aubrée-Dumont is a France-born writer living in Brighton. Her memoir-in-progress was shortlisted in the Mslexia Memoir Competition 2020. It is the story of how the diagnosis of her son’s speechlessness made her confront the silences in her French family. Instagram: @caroleaubreedumont 

Jess Barnfield works in audio publishing and lives in South London. Originally from the Midlands, she has lived and studied in Paris, Edinburgh and Cambridge. She was highly commended for the Bridport Prize First Novel Award in 2022 and is currently working on her first novel. Instagram: @jkbfield 

Sam Baxter is an aspiring screenwriter and a recent finalist in the SWN TV Pilot Screenplay Competition (Spring 2023). During the day, Sam works as a cyber security engineer, but their true passion lies in writing character-driven screenplays for TV and film. Instagram: @sambo5092 

Olga Braga is a playwright and screenwriter. She also does stand-up comedy, having performed at some of London’s most popular comedy clubs including Backyard Comedy, Top Secret, the Comedy Store, Camden Comedy Club and Vauxhall Comedy Club. Instagram: @olga__braga. Twitter: @OlgaBraga6 

Rachael Li Ming Chong is a writer, teacher and social entrepreneur. In 2022 she received a Let Teachers SHINE Award, and a Literature Matters Award from the Royal Society of Literature. She is a winner of The Poetry Archive’s Word View 2021 Competition and a graduate of the HarperCollins Author Academy. Twitter: @rhubarbpostcard 

Nicole Davis is a freelance creative producer, podcaster and writer. She commissions short films for BFI NETWORK, moderates events and panels, and recently produced the storytelling anthology podcast ‘Never Told’ with Brock Media. She lives in London. Twitter: @stonecoledfox 

Yiota Demetriou is a third-generation British Cypriot multimedia artist, educator, writer, and multisensory designer. Her award-winning artwork, which explores the intersection of technology, art, and human connection, has been exhibited across the EU, featured on BBC Radio, and in the Bookseller. She is writing creative non-fiction about the experiences of Cypriot women in the diaspora. Twitter: @yiota_demetriou. Instagram: @interactive_storytelling / @sapiopetrichor 

William Yamaguchi Dobson is a recovering barrister, full-time dad and husband, and writer of middle-grade fiction. He is working on a funny action-adventure series set in an alternate feudal Japan and has been shortlisted for The Bath Children’s Novel Award. He also writes stage plays and screenplays. Twitter: @WYDobson1 

Timothy Fox is originally from Texas. He received a Houston Press Theatre Award for his play The Whale; or, Moby-Dick and a Vault Festival Spirit Award for his play The Witch’s Mark. His writing has appeared in, among others, Gordon Square Review, Passengers Journal, Funicular Magazine and New Writing Scotland. Twitter: @timothy_fox_ Instagram: @timothy_fox_ 

Chris Fite-Wassilak is a writer and critic. He is a contributing editor of ArtReview, a regular contributor to e-flux Criticism and Art Monthly, and his essays have appeared in The Quietus, Vittles, and The Microbiopolitics of Milk (Sternberg, 2023). Twitter: @cfitewassilak 

Maryam Garad is a British-Somali actor and writer from London. Her writing explores belonging and the nuances of marginalisation. She was part of Omnibus Theatre’s Engine Room, where she performed the beginning of her debut play REPARATIONS. She is a recipient of Bush Theatre's Bloom Bursary and part of Soho Theatre's Writer's Lab. Twitter: @maryamgarad_ 

Yanita Georgieva is a Bulgarian poet and journalist. She received the Out-Spoken Prize for Page Poetry and is a member of the Southbank New Poets Collective. You can find her work in The London Magazine, Poetry Wales, bath magg, and her debut pamphlet is forthcoming with Broken Sleep in 2024. Twitter: @georgievayani. Instagram: @yanigorgonzola 

Alistair Hall is an actor and playwright from Wiltshire. His debut one-person play Declan, a queer thriller set in rural England, is making its Edinburgh Fringe debut in 2023. As a writer, his work takes an unsanitised look at human behaviour and focuses on characters on the outskirts of mainstream society. Twitter: @alistairhallyes. Instagram: @alistairhallyes 

Mark Henstock has always worked in communications. For charities, he managed award-winning campaigns that raised millions of pounds for causes ranging from homelessness to international development. He is writing non-fiction around the themes of history, probability and destiny. He lives in London. Twitter: @MarkHenstock1 

Marissa Mireles Hinds is a poet, filmmaker, writer, curator, artist, founder of Creative Until Death and co-founder of Babes in Development. She featured in the Dazed x Circa's Class of 2022 for her short film climate change but make it (pop!). In 2022, she won Out-Spoken’s Best Poetry in Film Award and the Bergstrom Studio Writers Grant. Twitter: @sanseriif. Instagram: @sanseriif 

Margaret Morrison worked in corporate information before spending many years immersed in confectionery. She’s been a freelance translator for five years in commercial work but is increasingly moving into literary translation. Her interests include French, comic books, French comic books, genre literature and foraging. @mmmtranslation 

Georgia Myers is a fiction writer from Hackney, whose short stories have been published by Influx Press and longlisted for the Mslexia prize. Previously, she studied Art History, worked at the BBC, and taught creative writing. She is currently writing a quirky historical novel. 

Esmé Hicks is a born and bred Londoner and filmmaker. She co-produced All My Friends Hate Me (2021) and has worked in production on features such as Femme (2023) and The End We Start From (in post-production). She is now focussing on creating her own work.Twitter: @EsmeHicks.Instagram: @esmelarissa

Preeti Jha is an award-winning reporter. She worked as a political journalist for the BBC and a foreign correspondent for Agence France-Presse, before going freelance to write about democracy, gender, and civil resistance. After a decade in Asia, she returned to London last year to write her first novel.Twitter: @PreetiJha

Monica Kam is a lawyer and writer from Hong Kong. She was a recipient of Spread the Word’s London Writers Award 2022. Her fiction and poetry have been shortlisted for the Comma Press 2023 Dinesh Allirajah Prize and commended by Ambit Magazine. Monica is currently completing a collection of short stories set in Hong Kong.Twitter: @kam_monica.Instagram: @monicakam

Rosie Kellett is a theatre, TV and food writer from Derbyshire. She has predominantly worked in theatre, with her first play Primadonna selected for the 2016 VAULT Festival, London. After ten years of working in the food industry as a chef, baker and project manager, she is now developing her first cookbook proposal.Twitter: @rosieakellett.Instagram: @rosiekellett

David Lowe works in London at an in-house creative agency. He’s a lover of all things monstrous and magical and is currently writing his first fantasy novel.

Lia Martin is an English-Romanian writer from London. She has worked in state secondary schools for a decade and recently graduated from Birkbeck with an MA in Creative Writing. In 2022, she was shortlisted for the Bridport and longlisted for the Brick Lane short story prizes She is currently working on a polyphonic novel.Twitter: @liaesthermartin

Ellen McAteer is a poet and songwriter. They won a Waterstones Refugee Week poetry competition, a BBC Download songwriting competition, and completed a Goldsmiths MA in Creative and Life Writing. Their work explores women's voices, alcoholism, and psychogeography and their pamphlet Honesty Mirror has been published by Red Squirrel Press.Twitter: @ellenmcateer.Instagram: @ellenmcateerpoet.Facebook: /ellenmcateer

Avril Millar is an engineer, physicist, businesswoman, board advisor and writer. She has changed careers five times, but always with the core value of making a difference, and still works full-time at 71. She is mother to two grown-up children, one a retired professional sportsman, the other a successful CEO, and grandmother to three.Twitter: @avrilmillar.Instagram: @Avrilmillarofficial / @avrilmillar

Helena Pickup is writing a non-fiction book on luxury, power and catastrophe. After a first degree in History at Oxford University and a Masters in Art History, she trained as a curator and has lectured at Sotheby’s Institute of Art for over ten years. Helena also writes historical and fantasy fiction.

EJ Robinson is a London-based writer of fiction with degrees in Theatre and Victorian History. Her work pinballs between magical realism for children and historical fiction for adults. She has lived in England, Ireland and Japan, and is working on a middle-grade series that draws from global folklore.Twitter: @AiRobinson

Lydia Sabatini is a London-based playwright and screenwriter originally from Essex. She was part of the Bush Theatre’s Emerging Writers Group 2021/22, the Traverse Theatre’s Breakthrough Writers: In Residence Programme 2022/3 and the Mercury Theatre’s Playwrights scheme 2022/3. She will be using this programme to develop film screenplays.

Kumyl Saied is a British-Arab Screenwriter who studied at the NFTS in 2022. His writing portfolio consists of feature films that explore longing, grief and mental illness. Family dysfunction serves as the glue that holds Kumyl's work together, be it through blood splattered horror or intimate drama.Instagram: @kayzone93

Molly Pepper Steemson is a writer and sommelier from London. She is the author of Very Short, a Substack series of 100 100-word stories. Her work is mostly concerned with food, drink, adultery, viscera and, occasionally, death.Twitter: @SteemsonMolly.Instagram: @molly.pepper.steemson

Madeline Heather Stephens did an English degree and a Masters degree in Renaissance Literature, at York. She has worked in fundraising and political campaigning for charities. An admirer of comic fiction, she hopes to write a novel that will make people laugh.

Stacey Taylor is a writer from Cardiff. She has an MA in English and Creative Writing and loves reading and writing in different genres. She was recently longlisted for the Penguin Michael Joseph Undiscovered Writers’ Prize. She is currently working on a YA novel.

Helena Tebeau grew up in Warsaw, Poland. She studied English at Swarthmore College in the US and received her MSc in Behaviour Economics from LSE. Living in London, she now works in life sciences consulting and translates Polish literature, exploring the subversion of femininity and motherhood in modern day interpretations of folklore and fairytales.Instagram: @helenaclairexx

Airy, a fashion stylist and drag queen, began their career in fashion writing for i-D. They were fashion director at Notion for three years before going freelance. Between styling for celebrity clients, they’re working on their first novel, a fictionalised account of their childhood in a Christian fundamentalist doomsday cult.@airysomething

Catherine Wilson Garry is a poet and writer based in Edinburgh. Her debut poetry pamphlet, Another Word for Home is Blackbird, was recently published by Stewed Rhubarb Press. Her writing has been published by organisations including Extra Teeth magazine, The Scotsman, BBC Radio 4 and The British National Gallery.Twitter: @CWilsonPoet.Instagram: @CWilsonPoet.Website: cwilsonpoet.co.uk

Adam Wynne studied English at Oxford University and is an alumnus of the Faber Academy Writing a Novel course. He has worked in business and government. Adam has a passion for thrillers - both contemporary and historical - and especially those with a dark comedic edge.

Tian Yi lives in London and writes weird short stories about families and hauntings. She has received support from the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference and Hedgebrook. She graduated with an MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck, where she was awarded a Sophie Warne Fellowship.Twitter: @tianyiwriting

 

Caroline Bird is a poet and playwright. Her sixth collection, The Air Year, won the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2020 and was shortlisted for the Polari Prize and the Costa Prize. Her fifth collection, In These Days of Prohibition, was shortlisted for the 2017 TS Eliot Prize and the Ted Hughes Award. As a playwright, Bird has been shortlisted for the George Devine Award and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Her Selected Poems, Rookie, was published in May 2022.

Moira Buffini is a screenwriter and playwright. Her plays include: Welcome to Thebes and wonder.land for the National Theatre; Dying for It and Marianne Dreams for the Almeida; Loveplay for the RSC; and the Olivier Award nominated Dinner and Olivier Award-winning Handbagged, both enjoyed successful transfers to the West End. Her screenplays include Tamara Drewe, Byzantium, Jane Eyre and The Dig and she is co-creator and writer of Harlots for ITV and Hulu.

Travis Elborough is an author and cultural commentator. His many books include The Bus We Loved, a history of the Routemaster bus; The Long-Player Goodbye, a hymn to vinyl records; Wish You Were Here, a survey of the British beside the seaside, A Walk in the Park: The Life and Times of a People’s Institution and Through the Looking Glasses: The Spectacular Life of Spectacles. Atlas of Vanishing Places won Illustrated Book of the Year at the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards in 2020.

Zoe Gilbert's novels are Folk, which was shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and adapted for BBC Radio, and Mischief Acts. Her short stories have been published in anthologies by Comma Press, appeared in publications including The Stinging Fly, Mechanics' Institute Review, and the British Fantasy Society Journal and won awards, including the Costa Short Story Award. She is co-founder of London Lit Lab with Lily Dunn, and the co-editor of A Wild and Precious Life, an anthology of writers in recovery.

Ayisha Malik is the author of the critically acclaimed novels, Sofia Khan is Not Obliged, The Other Half of Happiness, This Green and Pleasant Land and The Movement. She was a WHSmith Fresh Talent Pick, winner of The Diversity Book Awards and was shortlisted for the Asian Women of Achievement Award and Marie Claire’s Future Shapers Awards. She has written a re-telling of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park – part of Hachette’s Awesomely Austen children’s series – and the children’s book, Seven Sisters.

Emma Paterson is a Director of Aitken Alexander Associates and a member of the Booker Prize Foundation Advisory Committee. She was included in British Vogue’s 2021 list of the 25 most influential women and named one of Britain’s most influential people of African, African Caribbean and African American heritage by Powerlist. She represents literary fiction, non-fiction and poetry and her authors include Bernardine Evaristo, Mary Jean Chan, Rachel Long, Natasha Brown, Susanna Moore, Olivia Sudjic, Emma Dabiri, Shon Faye, Mona Chalabi and Sam Knight.

Chris Wellbelove is a Director of Aitken Alexander Associates and Head of the Book Department.He represents fiction, nonfiction and poetry and his authors include Daisy Johnson, Evie Wyld, The Secret Barrister, Kevin Jared Hosein, Vanessa Onwuemezi, Andrew McMillan, Kayo Chingonyi, Liz Berry, Jonathan Liew, Matthew Green, Grace Blakeley, Wayne McGregor and Ita O’Brien. His authors have won or been shortlisted for prizes including the Booker Prize, Dylan Thomas Prize, Waterstones Book of the Year, Forward Prizes, TS Eliot Prize and the Wainwright Prize.

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