The Glue Factory

With thanks to all who took part in this series:

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Paolo Albani is the author of collections of short stories and curious encyclopedic repertoires on imaginary languages, anomalous sciences, unobtainable books, anomalous institutes, crackpots and involuntary comedians. He is a member of OPLEPO (the Italian homologous to the French OULIPO) and Magnificent Consul of Pataphysics, and is the editor of Nuova Tèchne, a magazine of literary and non-literary oddities. He collaborates with the Italian nation-wide magazine Domenica de il Sole 24 ore.

Astrid Alben is a poet, editor and translator. She is the author of Ai! Ai! Pianissimo (Arc), Plainspeak (Prototype), Little Dead Rabbit (Prototype) and Klein dood konijn (PoëzieCentrum). Her translation of Anne Vegter’s Eiland berg gletsjer/Island mountain glacier received an English PEN Translates award (2022). She has worked with BBC Radio and Wellcome Collection with performance and animation. Alben was awarded a Wellcome Trust Fellowship (2014) for her work across the arts and sciences.

Darran Andersen is an Irish writer living in London. He is the author of Inventory (Chatto & Windus) and Imaginary Cities (Influx Press).

Ariel Anderssen is a submissive BDSM performer. She spent her childhood in a Jehovah's Witness family, and it was after training as a classical actress that she discovered her interest in BDSM was a legitimate sexual identity, rather than a shameful secret. Having ascertained that she wasn't entirely alone with her desires after all, she began modelling for bondage photographers in the hope of creating work that would demystify and perhaps play a part in destigmatising the BDSM community.  In 2015 she began producing her own fetish movies in addition to her regular modelling work. 

Her forthcoming memoir, Playing To Lose, is available to pre-order on Unbound's website; https://unbound.com/books/playing-to-lose/

Catherine Annabel is co-editor of the Pariah Press edition of the English translation of Butor's Passing Time, and has recently submitted a PhD thesis

to the University of Sheffield, on labyrinths and intertextuality in the work of Michel Butor and W G Sebald.

Nicky Arscott lives in mid Wales where she draws pictures. Nicky will talk about the process of working with poets such as Amy McCauley to make 'poetry comics’. Tonight's special focus will be on their current piece, 'The Ballad of Malady Nelson.'

Cassandra Atherton is a widely anthologised and award-winning Australian prose poet. She co-authored Prose Poetry: An Introduction (Princeton UP, 2020) and co-edited the Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry (Melbourne UP, 2020) with Paul Hetherington. Her books of prose poetry include Exhumed, (2016) Trace, (2016) Pre-Raphaelite (2018), Leftovers (2020) and Fugitive Letters (2020). She is currently working on a collection of prose poetry on the atomic bomb with funding from the Australia Council. Cassandra is a commissioning editor at Westerly magazine, senior editor at Spineless Wonders and associate editor at MadHat Press. She is a Professor of Writing and Literature at Deakin University, Melbourne Australia.

Bethlehem Attfield is an Amharic-English literary translator, born in Addis Ababa. She specialises in translating contemporary Ethiopian fiction. She founded the Ethiopian Translators Network and hosts the YouTube podcast Journey To Ethiopia with Story. She is currently undertaking a practice-based PhD at Birmingham University.

Emma Bache trained as a graphologist in the mid 1980s and since then has become one of the UK’s leading handwriting experts analysing the personalities behind the handwriting of the famous and infamous. She helps businesses with recruitment, individuals with career development and compatibility as well as appearing as a keynote and after dinner speaker. A former columnist with The Times and The Financial Times, her career has also included frequent TV and Radio appearances analysing celebrities, politicians and royalty. Emma also undertakes forensic work scrutinising disputed documents and signatures. At the end of 2018 her first book, Reading Between The Lines, was published by Quercus. www.EmmaBache.com

Khairani Barokka is a disabled Minang-Javanese writer and artist, now based in London, whose work is presented widely internationally, and centres disability justice as anticolonial praxis. Among Okka’s honours, she was a UNFPA Indonesian Young Leader Driving Social Change, an NYU Tisch Departmental Fellow, Modern Poetry in Translation’s Inaugural Poet-in-Residence, and Associate Artist at the National Centre for Writing (UK). Her books include Rope (Nine Arches), Indigenous Species (Tilted Axis), co-edited volume Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches), and, most recently, Ultimatum Orangutan (Nine Arches), shortlisted for the Barbellion Prize.

Simon Barraclough has published and edited several volumes and pamphlets, most recently the long poem Iarnród Éireann in 2021 (Broken Sleep Books). His debut collection Los Alamos Mon Amour was a Forward Prize finalist in 2008. He also devises and performs in multimedia projects involving filmmakers and musicians (Psycho Poetica in 2010, The Debris Field in 2010, Sunspots in 2015, Vertiginous in 2018). In 2014 he was writer in residence at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory in the UK. He is currently working on new poetry, stories and music. https://simonbarraclough.com/

Sara Baume’s work first appeared in newspapers and journals such as the Irish Times, the Guardian, The Stinging Fly and Granta. She won the 2014 Davy Byrnes Short Story Award for ‘SoleSearcher1’, and went on to receive the Hennessy New Irish Writing Award, the Rooney Prize for Literature and an Irish Book Award for Best Newcomer in 2015. Her debut novel Spill Simmer Falter Wither was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, the Warwick Prize for Writing, the Desmond Elliott Prize for New Fiction and the International Dublin Literary Award. It was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. In autumn 2015, she was a participant in the International Writing Program run by the University of Iowa and received a Literary Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Tramp Press also publishes her second novel A Line Made By Walking and handiwork, a non-fiction account of her life as an artist. Seven Steeples is her third novel. She grew up in East Cork and now lives in West Cork.

P J Blumenthal is an American writer living in Munich, Germany, who writes in both German and English. He is the author of a non-fiction book on feral man, Kaspar Hausers Geschwister (Kaspar Hauser's siblings) and a German language blog, ‘Der Sprachbloggeur’. Before he moved to Germany in 1975, three books of his poetry appeared in California, A Lusty Romance, Poems for Readers and Slow Train to Cincinnati. He worked for many years as a feature writer for a history magazine in Germany. After a long hiatus, he has only recently begun publishing literature again.

Kevin Boniface is an artist, writer and postman based in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. Over the years his work has taken the form of zines, exhibitions, artists’ books, short films and live performances. He is the author of Round About Town, published by Uniformbooks. kevinboniface.co.uk

Clarissa Botsford is a teacher, editor, literary translator, musician and Humanist celebrant living and working in Rome.

Charles Boyle runs CB editions, an independent press publishing short fiction and poetry, including work in translation. Writing as Jack Robinson, his most recent books are Good Morning, Mr Crusoe (CBe, 2019), a polemical piece marking the 300th anniversary of Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe and The Other Jack (2021) He collaborated with the artist Natalia Zagorska-Thomas on the monograph Blush (2018). The Disguise: Poems 1977-2001 edited by Christopher Reid, were published by Carcanet in 2021.

Marie-Elsa Roche Bragg is half French, half Cumbrian and was brought up in London. Her first novel Towards Mellbreak (2017) is about four generations of a Cumbrian hill farming family and her second, Sleeping Letters (2019) is the description of the ritual of the Eucharist alongside a compilation of poetry, memoir and fragments of un-sent letters. Both are published by Chatto & Windus. She writes for Radio 4, Church Times, Tablet and other papers. She is a Priest in the diocese of London. https://marie-elsabragg.com

David Bremner is a composer, pianist and organist based in Dublin (originally from West Cumbria). He studied composition with Gráinne Mulvey. His portrait CD Mixed Circuits will be released on the Farpoint Recordings label in December 2022. www.davidbremner.net, www.soundcloud.com/david-bremner

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan is the author of Harmless Like You and Starling Days. She has won The Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award and a Betty Trask Award and been short- listed for the Costa Novel Award. Her work has been a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and an NPR Great Read. She is also the editor of the Go Home! anthology.

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Lynn Buckle is an award-winning author described by June Caldwell as ‘a fierce and fearless new voice in Irish writing’ for her frank social observations and psychological insights. She lives in Ireland, where she teaches, paints, writes, and campaigns for social justice. A tutor at The Irish Writers’ Centre in Dublin, at Kildare & West Wicklow ETB, The National Centre for Writing UK, and a guest lecturer, she delivers a variety of courses and talks on Greek mythology, art, art history, teaching skills, contemporary literature, creative writing, domestic violence, nature & climate writing, and the art of protest writing. Her work includes two novels, five anthologies of short stories and poetry, and literary articles for magazines and the Irish Times. Her latest novel What Willow Says (Epoque Press, May 2021) has just been long listed for The Barbellion Prize

Nuzhat Bukhari was born in South Asia and moved to England in childhood. She has also spent a year living in Ireland and in America. She taught literature at Oxford and Cambridge for several years. Brilliant Corners, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, is her first book, published by CB editions: https://www.cbeditions.com/bukhari.html

Dr Elizabeth Chakrabarty is an interdisciplinary writer using creative and critical writing, besides performance, to explore themes of race, gender and sexuality. Her debut novel Lessons in Love and Other Crimes, inspired by experience of race hate crime, published in 2021 by the Indigo Press, was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize 2022.  for Lessons in Love and Other Crimes. She was also shortlisted for the Dinesh Allirajah Prize for Short Fiction, and her story has been published in a Comma Press e-anthology. She was also shortlisted for the Asian Writer Short Story Prize in 2016, and her story ‘Eurovision’ was published in Dividing Lines (Dahlia Publishing, 2017). Her poetry has been published by Visual Verse, and her short creative-critical work includes writing published in Glänta, Gal-Dem and New Writing Dundee, and more recently, in Wasafiri, and the anthology Imagined Spaces (Saraband, 2020). She received an Authors’ Foundation Grant from The Society of Authors (UK) in 2018, to support the writing of Lessons in Love and Other Crimes, and she was chosen as one of the runners-up for the inaugural CrimeFest bursary for Crime Fiction authors of colour in 2022. 

Peter Chrisp writes history books, and a Finnegans Wake blog, From Swerve of Shore to Bend of Bay. http://peterchrisp.blogspot.com

Caroline Clark lived for ten years in Moscow, where she met Andrei. They moved to Montreal for six years and now live in her hometown of Lewes. She works as a Russian translator and community interpreter. Her first collection was Saying Yes in Russian (Agenda Editions) followed in 2021 by Sovetica and in 2022 by Own Sweet Time (both published by CBeditions).

Tom Clayton’s non-fiction has appeared in The Sunday Times, Drowned in Sound, Louder Than War and The 405. His fiction has appeared in The Santa Fe Literary Review. He was the lead researcher and writer for Messing Up the Paintwork: The Wit and Wisdom of Mark E. Smith (Ebury, 2018); When Quiet Was the New Loud is his first original book. He lives and works in east London.

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John Clegg works as a bookseller in London. In 2013 he was awarded an Eric Gregory Prize. His second collection, Holy Toledo! (2016), was shortlisted for the Ledbury Forte Prize. Aliquot is his third collection, published by Carcanet.

Derek Collett is a writer and editor and a long-time fan of the British novelist Nigel Balchin. He is the author of His Own Executioner: The Life of Nigel Balchin and also maintains the Nigel Balchin Website (www.nigelmarlinbalchin.co.uk). Launched at the end of 2021, Derek’s latest publishing venture, the Nigel Balchin Collection, is the most comprehensive reissue programme of Balchin’s novels since the 1960s. The first two titles in the series are Seen Dimly Before Dawn and Simple Life.

Martin Conneely was London-born, but grew up and was educated in the West of Ireland. Last published creative work a few decades ago, then got a job that paid.  But kept reading, listening and viewing.

Tom Conaghan is the publisher of Scratch Books and an editor at Lolli Editions and the LBLA Literary Agency.

Susanna Crossman is an award-winning Anglo-French fiction writer and essayist. Her debut novel, l’île Sombre (Dark Island) is published by La Croisée/Delcourt (trans. Carine Chichereau).  Susanna has recent work in Aeon, Paris Review, MAI Journal, Neue Rundschau, S. Fischer (translated into German), We’ll Never Have Paris, Repeater Books, Trauma, DodoInk, 3:AM Magazine & more… Co-author of the French book, L'Hôpital Le Dessous des Cartes (LEH 2015), she regularly collaborates in international hybrid arts projects working with cartoonists, musicians, filmmakers and contemporary artists. Currently, she’s a guest editor for Lucy Writers with her series The Dinner Party Reloaded. She’s represented by Jessica Craig, Craig Literary NY. For more, see: https://susanna-crossman.squarespace.com

Katy Darbyshire is a translator of contemporary German writers and publisher of the V&Q Books imprint. She lives in Berlin, where she also co-hosts the Dead Ladies Show.

Kevin Davey is the author of Playing Possum and Radio Joan, both published by Aaargh! Press. His non-fiction work includes English Imaginaries (1999).

Ray Davis lives in El Cerrito, California, and publishes at pseudopodium.org. His writing has also appeared in Music & Literature, Genre, Senses of Cinema, Bright Lights Film Journal, the Public Domain Review, Ash of Stars, the Valve group website, and other venues.

Sasha Dugdale is a poet, playwright, and translator. She has worked as a consultant for theatre companies in addition to writing her own plays. From 1995 to 2000, she worked for the British Council in Russia. She is author of the poetry collections Deformations (2020), Joy (2017), winner of the 2017 Poetry Book Society Winter Choice Award; Red House (2011); The Estate (2007); and Notebook (2003). Her honours include the SOA Cholmondeley Award and the 2016 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem (for “Joy”). She has translated Russian poetry and drama, including Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. From 2012 to 2017, she served as editor of Modern Poetry in Translation, and she is co-director of the Winchester Poetry Festival.

Tim Dunn is a British railway historian, TV presenter, geographer and travel editor. He is well known for his presenting and writing work, primarily on rail transport and architecture. He also works as a travel editor for transport website Trainline. He co-presents the popular TV series ’Secrets of the London Underground’. More on his extensive broadcasting career here: https://www.unitedagents.co.uk/tim-dunn And you really should follow him on

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mrtimdunn

Stephanie Ellyne is an American actress based in London and Dublin. She recorded the 45-hour audio book of Booker nominee Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks, Newburyport (Whole Story/W.F. Howes) in 2020,and plays Amy Jennings in on-going British/American audio drama Dark Shadows with Big Finish, nominated for the BBC Audio Drama Awards. Other work includes The Confessions of Dorian Gray (Big Finish; Open Book (BBC Radio 4); and The Man Behind The Prophet (BBC World Service). Stephanie records stories for the annual Costa Short Story Award, and is a frequent narrator for RNIB Talking Books. Her most recent audio book is Things Are Against Us by Lucy Ellmann (W.F. Howes). 

Wendy Erskine works full-time as a secondary school teacher in Belfast. Her debut short story collection, Sweet Home, was published in 2018 by Stinging Fly and in 2019 by Picador. Her second collection Dance Move was published earlier this year. Her work has been published in The Stinging Fly, Stinging Fly Stories and Female Lines: New Writing by Women from Northern Ireland. She also features in Being Various: New Irish Short Stories (Faber and Faber), Winter Papers and on BBC Radio 4 Buy Sweet Home here: https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/wendy-erskine/sweet-home/9781529017069

Tim Etchells is an artist, writer and performance maker, author of Endland (published by And Other Stories) and a founder member and artistic director of the performance ensemble Forced Entertainment. His latest public artwork is ‘Qu'y a-t-il entre nous?’ At Centre Pompidou in Paris, an installation measuring more than forty-three metres long, made up of three-metre-tall letters. Fixed to the emblematic building, overlooking the Piazza from a height of twenty metres, the work poses a delicate question concerning what we share, what binds us and what separates us.

Alan Fielden is a London-based poet, performance maker, and artist. He will read a selection of poems and performance texts that play with iteration. 

Professor Finn Fordham studied English at Trinity College, Cambridge, and has been a Professor at Royal Holloway College since 2015. He is the author of Lots of Fun at Finnegans Wake: Unravelling Universals (OUP, 2007). Fordham’s research is focused on James Joyce, Modernism and 20th Century writing, specialising in Finnegans Wake, in genetic approaches to various texts, and uses of the cultural archive.      

S J Fowler At the 2022 Small Publishers Fair 'Bibliopoe' showcased books by poet, writer and performer SJ Fowler. With over fifty publications since 2010 made with many different imprints, Fowler’s books reveal the strength and diversity of British small press publishing. Ranging from formal poetry collections to innovative collaborative selections, from letterpress limited editions to poetry stickers, bags and posters – Fowler’s unique engagement with the British indie publishing scene has seen him reimagine the process of disseminating experimental literature. Bibliopoe captures his distinctive approach, where publications reveal context and process as well as content and product. Fowler’s prolific output suggests poetry not just as a rarefied act of self-reflection but as an active and collaborative means of understanding the world around us through language.

He has a terrific website: http://www.stevenjfowler.com/bio

Jay Gao is a poet, fiction writer, and the author of the poetry collection Imperium (2022). He is a Contributing Editor at The White Review. He is a winner of the 2022 Desperate Literature Prize for Short Fiction, the 2021 London Magazine Poetry Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2022 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award. Originally from Edinburgh, Scotland, he is an incoming PhD student at Columbia University in New York City.

Uschi Gatward was born in Mile End, London. Her debut collection, English Magic, is published by Galley Beggar Press. Her stories have appeared in the anthologies Best British Short Stories 2015 and 2021 (Salt) and Resist: Stories of Uprising (Comma Press). They have been published widely in magazines including The Dublin Review, Wasafiri and The White Review. Her publishers have shared this tribute on their website:

https://www.galleybeggar.co.uk/new-blog-1/2022/1/3/uschi-gatward-1972-2021

Josie George is a writer and visual artist. She lives with her son in the West Midlands. A Still Life was written mostly from bed and is her first book. She is currently working on a novel alongside exploring how drawing, painting and photography might help her to stay awake to life as it really is. josiegeorge.co.uk

Jonathan Gibbs is a writer and critic. His first novel, Randall, was published in 2014 by Galley Beggar Press and his second, The Large Door, by Boiler House Press in 2019. He has written on books for various publications including the TLS, Brixton Review of Books and The Guardian. He curates the online short story project A Personal Anthology, in which writers, critics and others are invited to 'dream-edit' an anthology of their favourite short fiction. His poem in 24 cantos Spring Journal is a response to the current coronavirus pandemic taking its cue very directly from Louis MacNeice's Autumn Journal.

Jake Goldmsith has Cystic Fibrosis, Type 1 diabetes, autism, scoliosis and a list of other chronic health conditions. His writing focusses on the phenomenology of illness, philosophy, and how illness defines one’s experiences. His memoir Neither Weak Nor Obtuse was published in 2019. He is the founder and director of The Barbellion Prize, an international book prize for ill and disabled authors.

James Goodman is a poet and environmentalist from Cornwall who is now based in Hertfordshire. His first collection, Claytown (Salt, 2011), explored the post-industrialising landscape, geology and nature of mid-Cornwall. James works at a charitable trust that funds community action.

Bernadette Gorman qualified as a teacher after graduating in English and History from University College Dublin and I worked as an English teacher off and on in secondary schools as well as working in the civil service. From 2000-2005, she worked as a curator, press officer and writer in the Oriel Gallery, Dublin. They had promoted Percy French's watercolours since 1968. The proprietor engaged her to work on Percy French's biography which she edited, researched and contributed to. It was published in 2002. She resumed teaching in 2005 and is now retired, working on a revised and expanded version of her book on the links between French and James Joyce.

Neil Griffiths is a British novelist. His first novel, Betrayal in Naples, won the Authors' Club First Novel Award, and Saving Caravaggio was shortlisted for the best novel in the Costa Book Awards (formerly the Whitbread Prize). His most recent novel As a God Might Be (2017) is an epic, Goldingesque account of a man who sets out to build a church. In 2016, Griffiths launched the Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses, to celebrate "small presses producing brilliant and brave literary fiction" in the UK and Ireland. It is now among the leading literary awards in Britain and has a central role in the promotion of independent presses and adventurous writing.

Graham Guest is originally from Houston, Texas.  He has lived in California, Idaho, and Glasgow; now he lives in Bristol with wife and daughter.  He holds a PhD in English from Glasgow University; he has taught English at Dominican University of California, and he is currently working on a PhD in philosophy from Dundee University.  Graham is a lifelong musician, and, once upon a time, he was a lawyer. http://graham-guest.com

Drew Gummerson is the author of ‘The Lodger’ (2002), which was a finalist in the Lambda Awards, and ‘Me and Mickie James’ (2008). He has been published in various short story collections. His third novel Seven Nights at the Flamingo Hotel is published by Bearded Badger Books. He tweets @drewgum.

David Hayden was born in Ireland and lives in England. His writing has appeared in A Public Space, Zoetrope: All-Story, Granta (online edition), the Dublin Review, AGNI, New York Tyrant and the Georgia Review. He is the author of the short story collection Darker With the Lights On (Carcanet/Transit).

Stu Hennigan is a writer, poet and musician from the north of England, currently based in Leeds. His short fiction has appeared in Lune Journal and the anthology The Middle Of A Sentence, and his poetry has been published in multiple places online, including at Visual Verse. He is currently working on a new novel as well as several other shorter creative projects. Ghost Signs is his first full-length published work. He also works as the Senior Librarian For Stock and Reader Development at Leeds Libraries.

David and Ping Henningham live and work in Dalston, London. They formed Henningham Family Press in 2006, making artists’ books and prints, performance publishing shows and, since 2018, publishing fiction and poetry as members of Inpress Books and in partnership with Unbound. David’s first novel Foulness will also be published by Unbound. https://www.henninghamfamilypress.co.uk/ They published Dedalus, Chris McCabe’s sequel to Ulysses, in 2018. https://www.henninghamfamilypress.co.uk/authors/chris-mccabe/dedalus/

Dr Emily Herring is a historian and philosopher of science. She studied philosophy at the Sorbonne and completed her PhD in the history and philosophy of science at the University of Leeds in 2019. After exploring the relationship between philosophy and science as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Ghent, she decided to leave academia and is now working as a freelance writer and editor. Herring has been published in prestigious academic journals such as the Annals of Science and the Revue d’histoire des sciences, she is copy editor for the Henri Bergson Society’s new journal Bergsoniana, and she is the co-editor of The Past, Present, and Future of Integrated History and Philosophy of Science (Routledge, 2019). Her work has appeared in Aeon magazine, Engelsberg Ideas, and Review 31 and she has delivered public lectures in the UK, the US, Australia, France and Norway. Her first book, CREATING CHANGE: The Life and Philosophy of Henri Bergson, will be published by Basic Books.

Rónán Hession is a writer, musician and civil servant from Dublin. His debut novel Leonard and Hungry Paul (published by Bluemoose Books) has been nominated for the Irish Book Awards, British Book Awards, the BAMB awards, and long listed for the Republic of Consciousness prize. His third album Dictionary Crimes was nominated for the Choice Music Prize for Irish Album of the Year. He is currently completing work on his second novel Panenka, which will be published by Bluemoose in 2021.A third novel, Ghost Mountain, will appear in 2023.

Tomoé Hill’s work has appeared in such publications as Socrates on the Beach, The London Magazine, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, 3:AM Magazine, Music & Literature, Numéro Cinq, and Lapsus Lima, as well as the anthologies We'll Never Have Paris (Repeater Books), Azimuth (Sonic Art Research Unit at Oxford Brookes University), and Trauma: Essays on Art and Mental Health (Dodo Ink).

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Elizabeth Hilliard is a singer based in Dublin. She is passionate for performing music by living composers. With the support of the Arts Council of Ireland, and South Dublin and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Councils she collaborates with many composers, artists and dancers to create new work. Current projects include a collaboration with Louise Manifold for her Air Looms exhibition at the Dock, and Great Women, a 25-minute work for voice and electronics by Irish composer Gráinne Mulvey, commissioned by the Great Music in Irish Houses festival, to be released on the Métier label.

Richard V. Hirst is a writer and editor from Manchester. His website: https://www.ithoughtitoldyoutowaitinthecar.com/

David Holzer is a dedicated yogi, author, blogger and journalist. He founded YogaWriters and has taught workshops in yoga for writers in Mallorca, where he lives. Hundreds of people have taken his Yoga for Writers course on the DailyOm platform (www.yogawriters.org). His writing appears regularly in Om yoga and lifestyle magazine.

Laura Hopkins is an award-winning stage designer and ceramicist-in-training. Her website: www.laurahopkins.co.uk

Vlatka Horvat is an artist working across a range of forms, including sculpture, installation, drawing, performance, photography and writing. She teaches in the Fine Art department at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.

Michael Hughes is a native of Keady in County Armagh. A writer, successful stage and screen actor, lecturer in Creative Writing at Queen Mary University of London, he also works in film production and script development. His engrossing debut novel, The Countenance Divine, (2016) is an apocalyptic thriller, followed by Country (2018) which was shortlisted for the UK nominations for the European Union Prize for Literature 2019.

Dr Clare Hutton is Reader in English and Digital Humanities at Loughborough University.  She grew up in Dublin but has lived in England for years.  She has curated Women and the Making of Ulysses, a centenary exhibition at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin.  This explores the role which women played in helping Joyce to realise Ulysses.

https://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/2022/women-and-the-making-of-ulysses/ She is the author of Serial Encounters: Ulysses and the Little Review (OUP, 2019) which is due out in paperback later in February.

Kirsten Irving is a Lincolnshire-born, London-based poet and voiceover, and one half of the team behind collaborative press Sidekick Books. Her work has been published by Salt and Happenstance, widely anthologised and thrown out of a helicopter. She has won the Live Canon International Poetry Prize, judged competitions, and taught courses on folklore in poetry. Her second full collection, Hot Cockalorum, is out now from Guillemot Press. Kirsten works in a library, writes about toys, and is planning her woodland burial.

Andrew Jamieson trained at the Bath Centre for Psychotherapy and Counselling and received an MA in Humanistic and Integrative Psychotherapy at Middlesex University. He lectures and writes articles on a series of subjects including psychotherapy’s interconnection with philosophy, music and literature. Parallel to his psychotherapeutic career, he has promoted orchestral concerts throughout the UK for over forty years.

Ricky Jay (1946 – 2018) was an American stage magician, actor and writer. He was also perhaps the most gifted sleight of hand artist of all time. He also wrote extensively on magic and its history. His acting credits included the films The Prestige, The Spanish Prisoner, Mystery Men, Heist, Boogie Nights, Tomorrow Never Dies, House of Games, and Magnolia.

Tom Jenks' most recent books are Rhubarb (Beir Bua Press) and Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs, a pangrammatic novel in collaboration with Catherine Vidler (Penteract Press). He edits the small press zimZalla, specialising in literary objects. 

Glenn Johnston is from Ireland and has lived in New York for a long time. He collects and tweets about James Joyce @johnstonglenn (enough that it worries his children).

Sam Jordison co-founded Galley Beggar Press. He writes for the Guardian, has written several works of non-fiction  the best-selling Crap Towns series and Enemies Of The People, a book that was tragically right about everything and the awful people who have been wrecking our lives since 2016.

Alex Kapila is an actor, presenter and voice over artist based in Stratford-upon-Avon. Alex was in the stage production Food Bank As It which aimed to raise awareness of food poverty in the UK and was performed at various venues including the Palace of Westminster.

Marit Kapla was born in 1970 in the small village of Osebol in the mid-western parts of Sweden. In 2019, she debuted with the book OSEBOL, in which she interviewed all the forty or so residents of her hometown in a work which would grant her the 2019 August Prize for best fictional book, as well as the Borås Tidning’s Debutant Prize of 2020.

Bryan Karetnyk is an editor and a translator of Russian literature. He read Russian and Japanese at the University of Edinburgh, subsequently working as a translator for the Civil Service. His recent work focuses primarily on Russian émigré studies, and his acclaimed translations of Gaito Gazdanov include The Spectre of Alexander Wolf, The Buddha's Return and The Flight.

Luke Kennard is a poet and novelist who lectures at the University of Birmingham. His 6th full collection, Notes on the Sonnets, won the Forward Prize in 2021.

Aaron Kent is a poet and publisher from Cornwall, though he currently lives in Wales with his wife, Emma and their two young children. He runs the poetry press Broken Sleep Books and has recently finished his debut novel. Aaron is a working-class writer, and particularly wants to advocate for more working-class voices in literature. He had several poetry pamphlets published, his debut collection, Angels the Size of Houses, is available from Shearsman Books.

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Kirsteen Knight is a producer at the BBC, and the partner of Alastair Morgan, who has been instrumental in pursuing the truth about his brother Daniel Morgan’s death. See their Twitter account, justice4daniel.

Jennifer L. Knox is currently at work on a traveling public art installation dedicated to increasing awareness of mycoremediation. She lives in central Iowa and is the proprietor of Saltlickers, a small spice blend company. Of her most recent book of poems (Crushing It, Copper Canyon Press, 2020) V. Joshua Adams wrote:

‘Knox’s poetry  performs...embarrassment of the abject in a spectacular way, while also grounding her performance in the particulars of what one might be embarrassed about. Think Sharon Olds on psychedelics.’ 

Andrew Lees is Professor of Neurology at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square, London and University College London. In 2011 he was named as the world's most highly-cited Parkinson's disease researcher. In addition to his distinguished academic career he has written a book about the city of Liverpool and the authorized biography of footballer Ray Kennedy. Lees was a longstanding friend of Oliver Sacks, who also trained at National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery ion London. In his memoir Mentored by a Madman he explains how his career was influenced by Arthur Conan Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes and by the self-experimentation of William S. Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch. 

Riva Lehrer is an American painter, writer, teacher, and speaker. Lehrer was born with spina bifida and has undergone numerous surgeries throughout her life.

Her work focuses on issues of physical identity and the socially challenged body, especially in explorations of cultural depictions of disability. Lehrer is well known as both an artist and an activist in the field of Disability Culture. Her website: www.rivalehrerart.com

Toby Litt grew up in Ampthill, Bedfordshire. He has worked as a teacher, bookseller and subtitler. A graduate of Malcolm Bradbury’s Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia, Toby is best known for writing his books – from Adventures in Capitalism to Patience – in alphabetical order. He is a Granta Best of Young British Novelist and a regular on Radio 3’s The Verb. His story ‘John and John’ won the Manchester Fiction Prize, and his most recent short story collection, Life-like, was shortlisted for the Edgehill Prize and longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize. Toby teaches creative writing at Birkbeck College. His memoir, Wrestliana, was published by Galley Beggar Press in May 2018.

Kurt Luchs After years of writing humor for the New Yorker, the Onion and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, among others, Kurt Luchs returned to his first love, poetry, like a wounded animal crawling into its burrow to die. In 2017 Sagging Meniscus Press published his humor collection, It’s Funny Until Someone Loses an Eye (Then It’s Really Funny), which has since become an international non-bestseller. In 2019 his poetry chapbook One of These Things Is Not Like the Other was published by Finishing Line Press, and he won the Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest, proving that dreams can still come true and clerical errors can still happen. His first full-length poetry collection, Falling in the Direction of Up, was published by Sagging Meniscus in 2021.

Jackie Lynam is a librarian with Dublin City Libraries. She has been writing poetry since 2017 and has been published in the Banger Literary Journal, Honest Ulsterman, Boyne Berries and North West Words. Her essays have been broadcast on Sunday Miscellany on RTÉ Radio One, and her poems have been shortlisted for the Anthony Cronin International  Poetry Award and Write by the Sea Competition.

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