Biographical Notes

Tom Bell was born in Southwark in 1949. An electrician by trade, he was the full time General Secretary of the Young Communist League in the seventies. Now a full time official with the media and entertainment union BECTU, he started writing poetry five years ago.

Linda Black is a poet and a visual artist. In 2006 she won the New Writing Ventures Poetry Award. The beating of wings (Hearing Eye 2006) was the PBS Pamphlet Choice for Spring 2007. She received an Arts Council Writer's Award in 2007 and a collection of prose poems, Inventory, was published by Shearsman in 2008. A second collection, Root, is forthcoming from Shearsman in June 2011. She is an editor of Long Poem Magazine www.longpoemmagazine.org.uk

Jerry Brunoe was raised on the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon and attended Oregon State University both briefly and sporadically. After leaving the University system, he has travelled through most of the Western United States, and thoroughly through Oregon. He has a cliched love for the road and an affinity for the outdoors and people watching. His poetry has appeared in Contrary and To Topos: Poetry International, and he is the editor of Toe Good Poetry.

Mark Burnhope was born in 1982 and studied at London School of Theology before completing an MA in Creative Writing at Brunel University. His work has appeared in a variety of print and online publications. He currently lives and writes in Bournemouth, Dorset with his partner, four stepchildren, two geckos and a greyhound. The Snowboy (Salt) is his first book of poetry.

Nancy Campbell <www.nancycampbell.co.uk> read English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and then apprenticed as a letterpress printer, working with artists across Britain and North America. 

Nancy's poetry publications include Boat Trip (2006), After Light (2009) and Dinner and a Rose (2010). Last year she was writer-in-residence at Upernavik Museum, Greenland, funded by Arts Council England. Her latest book, The Night Hunter (Z'Roah Press, New York), relates her experiences during the Arctic winter.

Niall Campbell (b. 1984) from the Western Isles of Scotland graduated from St Andrews University in 2009 with an MLitt in Creative Writing. He has had work published, or forthcoming in: Poetry Review, Blackbox Manifold, Cyphers and the Red Wheelbarrow. His first pamphlet is due to be released by Happenstance Press in 2012. He currently lives in Glasgow.

Polly Clark is the author of three collections of poetry from Bloodaxe, the most recent of which is Farewell My Lovely (2009). Her first collection, Kiss, was a PBS Recommendation and her second Take Me With You a PBS Choice and shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. She has also published stories in the Comma Ellipsis series. She lives in Scotland and produces the Literature Programme for Cove Park, Scotland's International Artist Residency Centre.

John Clegg was born in 1986 and is studying for a PhD at Durham University on the Eastern European influence in contemporary English poetry. His e-chapbook, Advancer, was published in 2010 by Silkworms Ink, and other poems have been published in Magma, The Rialto, Succour, Pomegranate and elsewhere. He is currently working on his first collection.

Carrie Etter's first collection, The Tethers (Seren, 2009), won the London Festival Fringe New Poetry Award, and her second, Divining for Starters, has just been published by Shearsman Books. She has also edited an anthology, Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets. She is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and enjoys blogging at carrieetter.blogspot.com.

Suzannah Evans lives in Leeds. She is studying for an MA in Writing at Sheffield Hallam University. She has had poems published in magazines including The Rialto and Brittle Star. She is poetry editor for Cadaverine, an online magazine for under-25s and runs writing workshops at the Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery in Leeds.

Rachel J. Fenton is a writer and painter. She lives in Auckland and has prose and poetry housed in Ramshackle Review; Eclectic Flash; Melusine; Camroc Press Review; and Ink, Sweat & Tears, to name a few. Her short fiction "One Of These Days" was longlisted for the 2010 Sean O'Faolain International Prize and her flash "Rogue Trading" was shortlisted for the 2010 Fish Prize. Links to other works can be found on her blog at snowlikethought.blogspot.com.

Donald Gardner is a London-born poet and translator who has lived many years abroad – Rome, New York and Holland. His publications include How to Get the Most out of Your Jet Lag (Ye Olde Font Shoppe, New Haven, Ct. 2001), I Dreamed of the Cities at Night, a translation of Remco Campert (Arc, 2007) and two pamphlets, The Glittering Sea (Hearing Eye, 2006) and Sleight of Tongue (Boekie Woekie, Amsterdam, 2010). He divides his time between Amsterdam and Kildare. www.donaldgardner.net

Susan Grindley is a poet and landscape architect. Her poems have been widely published in printed and online magazines including Magma, Rising, Nth Position and The Page; also in anthologies including Gobby Deegan's Riposte (Donut Press, edited by John Stammers), for which she wrote the title poem. She has had poems highly commended in the Edwin Morgan International Poetry Competition, 2010 and the Larkin and East Riding Poetry Competition, 2011. In 2010 she was commissioned by the Whitechapel Art Gallery to write and perform poems to celebrate the life and work of the American artist, Alice Neel.

Ernest Hilbert's poems have appeared in The New Republic, Yale Review, Harvard Review, Verse, New Criterion, and the London Magazine. He attended Oxford University, where he edited the Oxford Quarterly. He has been poetry editor of Random House's magazine, Bold Type, and the Contemporary Poetry Review. His poems have appeared in several anthologies, including the Swallow Anthology of New American Poets and two best-selling Penguin anthologies. His debut collection is Sixty Sonnets (Red Hen Press).

Jenny Holden has an MA in Writing from the University of Warwick and now lives in Oxford, where she is working on her first novel. Her short stories have been published in Brand, Fractured West, Junctures Journal, and online at likestarlings. She was runner-up in the 2009 Orange/Harpers' Bazaar Short Story Competition and long-listed in the 2010 Short Fiction New Writers Competition.

Jane Holland is a poet, novelist, editor and critic. She won an Eric Gregory Award in 1996, and her debut collection, The Brief History of a Disreputable Woman, was published by Bloodaxe Books the following year. Her latest collection of poetry is Camper Van Blues (Salt Publishing). She is the former editor of Horizon Review, and has been a tutor for both the Arvon Foundation and the Poetry School.

Michael Horovitz's Blakean magnum opus, 'A New Waste Land: Timeship Earth at Nillennium' is published by New Departures (www.poetryolympics.com) and distributed by Central Books (www.centralbooks.com), as are most of his publications in print. The William Blake Klezmatrix band, featuring Peter Lemer on piano, Madeline Solomon's flute, Annie Whitehead's trombone & vocals, and Michael's singing & anglo-saxophone are about to release their first CD.

Andrew Buchanan Jackson was born in Glasgow in 1965. His first book,/Fire Stations/ (Anvil Press), won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2003. In August 2010 his poem 'Treasure Island' won 1st prize in the Edwin Morgan Poetry Competition. Donut Press published a signed and numbered edition of /Apocrypha/, a twenty-one poem series, in February 2011.

Andrew Jamison was born in Co. Down in 1986 and studied English at Queen Mary, University of London. His poetry has been published in Poetry Review, Poetry Ireland Review 100, The Rialto, The Yellow Nib, The Ulster Tatler, The Dark Horse, The Red Wheelbarrow, The SHOp and Cyphers. He was recently selected as a UK Young Artist by the Arts Council England and will represent the UK at the International Young Artists Biennale in Morocco in 2011.

Charles Jennings is a writer, journalist and broadcaster. He has been a columnist in The Times, Guardian and Observer, and is the author of several critically-acclaimed books: among them, Up North, The Fast Set and Them And Us. He is currently working on a critical introduction to the works of Jane Austen.

Caleb Klaces is originally from Birmingham, UK, but is now based in Austin, Texas, where he is editor-in-chief of the Bat City Review. His poems have appeared in journals including Poetry, Oxford Poetry and Modern Poetry in Translation. I have a pamphlet forthcoming in 2011 from Flarestack. He was also twice among the UK's Foyle National Young Poets of the Year.

Simon Korner's short stories have won several awards, including the V.S Pritchett Memorial Prize, The Reader Short Story Prize and the Quiller-Couch Prize. They have been widely published – in the London Magazine, Jewish Quarterly, Malahat Review (Canada), Leviathan Quarterly, openDemocracy and elsewhere – broadcast on Radio 4 and anthologised. One story was the basis for the UK movie New Year's Day. He lives and works in London.

W.F. Lantry, a native of San Diego, received his Licence and Maîtrise from L'Université de Nice, and Ph.D. in Creative Writing from University of Houston. In 2010 he won the Lindberg Foundation International Poetry for Peace Prize (in Israel), Crucible Poetry Prize and CutBank Patricia Goedicke Prize. His work has appeared in Wallace Stevens Journal, Prairie Fire, Asian Cha, Snakeskin and Aesthetica. He currently works in Washington, DC and is a contributing editor of Umbrella.

Toby Litt is a Granta Best of Young British Novelist and a regular on Radio 3's The Verb. He is the author of two collections of stories and nine novels including Corpsing, deadkidsongs, Ghost Story and King Death. His story 'John & John' won the 2009 Manchester Fiction Prize. 'Paddy & Veronika' is part of Life-Like, a collection of stories following Paddy and Agatha who appeared in Ghost Story. His website is at www.tobylitt.com.

Nicholas Liu lives in Singapore, where he is currently a research assistant for the Singapore Poetry Archive (SPARK). Recent publications include poems in Likestarlings, Poetry Review and Stand Magazine. His first collection, Versions from the English, is forthcoming from firstfruits publications. He edits Unswept: a journal of influence and blogs at The Placeholder.

Andrew Martin is a novelist and freelance journalist, author of the Jim Stringer railway novels (Faber) and How to Get Things Really Flat (Short Books), among others. He grew up in Yorkshire and lives in London. Tim Turnbull's poetry collections 'Stranded in Sub-Atomica' and 'Caligula on Ice and Other Poems' are available from Donut Press. He lives in Scotland where he works on adult literacy projects, supernatural tales, more poems and his deportment, though not necessarily in that order. And David Secombe is a photographer, writer, and editor of The London Column (http://thelondoncolumn.com). His photographs are held in the National Portrait Gallery collection, and as well as writing about photography he has written several plays and screenplays.

Sophie Mayer is a writer and educator who has studied and taught in Cambridge and Toronto. She is a Commissioning Editor for the queer literary journal Chroma and has won an Eric Gregory Award. She has written for English PEN, the English National Opera, the British Film Institute, Sight & Sound, Little White Lies, The F-Word, Hand+Star, Eyewear, Sound and Music, and her blog, delirium's library, and appears in the anthologies The Allotment, Infinite Difference, Best British Poetry 2011 and Lung Jazz. She is co-editor of There She Goes: Feminist Filmmaking and Beyond, and the author of The Cinema of Sally Potter: A Politics of Love. The Private Parts of Girls (Salt, 2011) is a follow-up to Her Various Scalpels (Shearsman, 2009). She lives in London. http://www.sophiemayer.net

Michelle McGrane was born in Zimbabwe in 1974, spent her childhood in Malawi, and moved to South Africa with her family when she was fourteen. Her collection, The Suitable Girl (2011), is published by Pinddrop Press. Michelle lives in Johannesburg and blogs at: http://peonymoon.wordpress.com.

Andrew McMillan was born in 1988. His work has appeared in print and online journals such as The London Magazine, The North and Pomegranate. A debut pamphlet, every salt advance, was published in 2009 and a second pamphlet is due later this year, both from Red Squirrel Press.

Alistair Noon's most recent chapbook is Out of the Cave (Calder Wood). Two further chapbooks, Across the Water and Swamp Area are due to appear from Longbarrow Press in 2011. His first full-length collection, Earth Records, is forthcoming from Nine Arches Press in 2012. Born in 1970, he's lived in Berlin since the early nineties, where he works as a translator from German in the field of corporate law.

Ian Parks was one of the Poetry Society New Poets in 1996. He was made a Hawthornden Fellow in 1991 and has taught creative writing at the universities of Sheffield, Hull, Oxford and Leeds. His poems have appeared in The Liberal, The Observer, Poetry Review, London Magazine, The Independent on Sunday, Poetry (Chicago) and Magma. His collections include Shell Island (Waywiser), Love Poems 1979-2009 (Flux Gallery Press) and The Landing Stage (Lapwing. Belfast). His pamphlet, A Paston Letter is published by Rack Press.

Andrew Pidoux's collection Year of the Lion was published last year by Salt. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 1999 and Salt's Crashaw Prize in 2009. His other credits include the anthologies First Pressings (Faber) and New Writing 10 (Picador) as well as magazines such as Acumen, Iota, Poetry Wales, Saltsburg Review and Stand. He has also published stories in two Doctor Who anthologies for Big Finish. He lives in Harlesden in west London.

Stav Poleg's poems have appeared in Magma, Nthpositon, and Brand Literary Magazine and her theatre work performed at the Shunt Vaults, London Bridge. She studied playwriting at Birkbeck College, University of London, and has been part of Liane Strauss's Coram Fields poetry group. She currently lives in Edinburgh.

Wena Poon's novel Alex y Robert (Salt) was made by the BBC into a 10 episode Radio 4 series broadcast worldwide. She is a two-time nominee for the Irish Frank O'Connor Award for her short fiction collections Lions In Winter in 2008 and The Proper Care of Foxes in 2010. Born in Singapore, she received degrees in literature and law from Harvard and is an attorney by profession.

Meryl Pugh grew up in Wales, New Zealand, East Anglia and the Forest of Dean, where her family settled. Educated at Queens' College, Cambridge and the Institute of Education, she has an MA in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths College. Arrowhead Press published her pamphlet, Relinquish, in 2007. More recently, poems and reviews appeared in Poetry Review, The Moth, Modern Poetry in Translation and The Rialto. She lives in East London and works in a library.

Sheenagh Pugh lives in Shetland but also has close connections with Wales. Her latest collection was Long-Haul Travellers (Seren 2008) and her Later Selected Poems came out from Seren in 2009. She has also published a critical book on fan fiction, The Democratic Genre (Seren 2005)

Born in London, Sue Rose now lives in Kent where she works as a literary translator. She has an MPhil in writing from Glamorgan University and her poetry has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies. She has been placed in various competitions, winning the Troubadour Poetry Prize in 2009 and the Canterbury Poet of the Year competition in 2008. Her debut collection is due out from Cinnamon in the autumn of 2011.

Jacqueline Saphra's poetry has been widely published and her plays performed on stage and television. She has won several awards including first prize in the Ledbury Poetry Competition. Her pamphlet, Rock'n'Roll Mamma (Flarestack) was followed by a first full collection, The Kitchen of Lovely Contraptions, developed with the support of the Arts Council of England, published by flipped eye in June 2011.

Catherine Smith (www.catherinesmithwriter.co.uk) teaches creative writing for Sussex University and the Arvon Foundation and writes drama, poetry and fiction. Her latest poetry collection, Lip, was short-listed for the Forward Prize for Best Collection. Her first collection of short stories, The Biting Point, has recently been published by Speechbubble Books (www.speechbubblebooks.co.uk)

Jon Stone was born in Derby and lives in Whitechapel, London. He's co-creator of Sidekick Books (www.drfulminare.com), a publisher of collaborative poetry collections and the arts journal Fuselit (fuselit.co.uk). In 2009 he was highly commended in the National Poetry Competition, and his pamphlet, Scarecrows, was published by Happenstance. He recently co-edited Birdbook: Towns, Parks, Gardens and Woodland, a collection of poems and illustrations by over 50 writers and artists. A full collection, School of Forgery, is due from Salt in early 2012.

Todd Swift is a tutor with The Poetry School, and Lecturer in Creative Writing at Kingston University. Poems of his have appeared in The Guardian, Poetry (Chicago), Poetry London, and Poetry Review. He is the author six poetry collections, most recently Seaway: New and Selected Poems (Salmon, 2008) and Mainstream Love Hotel (Tall-lighthouse, 2009). He is co-editor of Modern Canadian Poets: An Anthology, from Carcanet (2010). His blog is Eyewear.

Matt Thorne is the author of six novels including Eight Minutes Idle (Winner of an Encore Award) and Cherry. He has also written three children's books (the 39 Castles series, published by Faber), co-edited two anthologies and recently co-wrote the screenplay for a film version of Eight Minutes Idle which is going into production this year. He's currently working on a critical study of the pop star Prince to be published by Faber in 2012.

Claire Trévien was born in 1985 in Brittany. She is a poet, critic and literary translator. Her writing has been published in a wide variety of literary magazines including Under The Radar, Poetry Salzburg Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Warwick Review, Nth Position, and Fuselit. Earlier this year she published an e-chapbook of poetry with Silkworms Ink called Patterns of Decay. She is the editor of Sabotage Reviews and Noises Off. She was the winner of Leaf Book's 2010 Nano-Fiction Competition.

Tim Turnbull's poetry collections Stranded in Sub-Atomica and Caligula on Ice and Other Poems are available from Donut Press. He lives in Scotland where he works on adult literacy projects, supernatural tales, more poems and his deportment, though not necessarily in that order.

Tony Williams' poetry collection The Corner of Arundel Lane and Charles Street (Salt, 2009) was shortlisted for the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and the Portico Prize. A book of short stories is forthcoming from Salt in 2012. He is lecturer in creative writing at Northumbria University.

Tamar Yoseloff was born in the US in 1965. She is the author of three previous poetry collections, including Fetch (Salt, 2007). She is also the author of Marks (Pratt Contemporary Art, 2007), a collaborative book with the artist Linda Karshan, and the editor of A Room to Live In: A Kettle's Yard Anthology (Salt, 2007). She lives in London, where she is a freelance tutor in creative writing. Here latest book is The city with horns (Salt 2011).