Dr Sarah Armstrong
Sarah Armstrong’s debut novel, The Insect Rosary, was published by Sandstone Press in 2015. Her second novel, The Devil in the Snow, was published in 2017 and her latest novel The Wolves of Leninsky Prospekt was published at the end of 2018. Her short stories have been published in anthologies, as well as magazines such as Mslexia and Litro. She reads and writes in a range of genres, specialising in literary fiction, historical fiction and psychological thrillers.
Sarah has extensive and varied experience over many years teaching creative writing both in university and community contexts. She has taught undergraduate Creative Writing with the Open University since the course started in 2006 and also teaches Advanced Creative Writing. In addition, Sarah teaches on a variety of interdisciplinary courses which has enabled her to explore links between literature and philosophy, music, history, classical studies, religion, history of science and art history.
Sarah has also led successful private courses in short story and novel writing at a local bookshop, and works privately with individuals, culminating in a two-book contract for one writer. Having undertaken writing courses of her own, Sarah has a good awareness of what it is like to receive feedback, as well as how to improve a piece of writing, and this informs the way she responds to the work of other writers.
Dan Blythe
Daniel Blythe is the author of 25 books including three dark literary thrillers, The Cut (Penguin), Losing Faith (Hamish Hamilton) and This is the Day (Allison and Busby) and most recently his work has been aimed at young readers (Shadow Runners, Emerald Greene and a new Sci-Fi novel EXILES which was published in August 2019).
Daniel has taught on the Creative Writing MA at Sheffield Hallam University encompassing work on novels in progress across a wide range of genres including literary, crime, historical fiction and fantasy.
For five years he led writing workshops on ‘Writing a Novel’ and ‘Being Published’. He has also led writing days with children and teenagers in over 400 primary and secondary schools, has been Patron of Reading for two schools and has appeared at festivals including Hay, Winchester and Off The Shelf.
Daniel is a former member of the committee of CWIG (the Children’s Writers and Illustrators Group) at the Society of Authors. Daniel lives in Yorkshire with his wife Rachel and their two teenage children.
He has been published by Penguin, Hamish Hamilton, Allison and Busby, BBC Books, Chicken House, Scholastic and Badger, and he is represented by a leading London agent. He has written for the BBC’s series of original Doctor Who books, including Doctor Who: The Dimension Riders (Virgin Books), Doctor Who: Infinite Requiem (Virgin Books) and Doctor Who: Autonomy (BBC Books).
Neil Broadfoot
Hailed by Ian Rankin as a “true rising star of crime fiction”, Neil Broadfoot is the author of six critically acclaimed novels, which have seen him twice nominated for the McIlvanney Award as well as the Dundee International Book Prize. Neil regularly chairs panels at crime writing festivals and, with the advent of covid-19, has helped organise several online festivals, including Lyme Crime, Newcastle Noir and Bloody Scotland.
A former journalist with 15 years’ experience in the national press, Neil is also a highly experienced manuscript editor, and works with established and emerging writers to hone their work before publication or submission to an agent.
Keirsten Clark
Keirsten set up Writing.co.uk in 2002 after working at one of London’s leading literary agencies – Curtis Brown – to provide authors with a service which gave them feedback as to why they were being rejected by literary agents and how to improve in those areas.
Many years on she is now a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a member of the Chartered Institute for Editors and Proofreaders and the Royal Society of Literature and has a Masters of Creative Writing with Distinction and is still very much involved in the day to day editing and mentoring of the authors at writing.co.uk.
Jon Curzon
Jon works at the literary agency Artellus, and also as an editor for the writing.co.uk literary consultancy. Artellus is a small, long-established agency that has represented writers including Salman Rushdie and Anthony Burgess. In a team of five, Jon works closely with the agency founders in looking for new and innovative writing. This has involved working with writers from a post-Jungian psychologist, on a self-help title, to a drug store clerk writing experimental fiction.
Jon specialises in literary fiction and literary non-fiction and also has a keen interest in crime and thriller manuscripts, memoir, politics and history.
Jon graduated with first class honours in literature, specialising in modern American fiction, and has worked in editorial at The Economist, publicity at Vintage (Random House), and at the Eve White literary agency – where he handled submissions.
Kate Dunn
Kate comes from a long line of writers and actors: her great-great-grandfather Hugh Williams was a Welsh chartist who published revolutionary poetry, her grandfather, another Hugh Williams, was a celebrated actor and playwright and her uncles are the poet Hugo Williams and the actor Simon Williams.
Kate followed her family into the theatre and acted in repertory, toured around Britain, the Far and Middle East and appeared in three West End plays, as well as a number of television productions. Her career changed with the birth of her son, Jack, and the publication of her first novel, Rebecca’s Children, by Barrie and Jenkins. This was followed by the publication of Always and Always, the Wartime Letters of Hugh and Margaret Williams, edited by Kate, published by John Murray and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. In October 1998 John Murray issued Exit Through the Fireplace – The Great Days of Rep and the sequel to this, Do Not Adjust Your Set – The Early Days of Live Television, was published in 2003.
Kate has since focused mainly on fiction and is a published author with a great deal of experience in manuscript appraisal, having taught Creative Writing for more than twenty years at the universities of Warwick, Cardiff and Bristol, where she has had the profound pleasure of seeing some of her students move from beginners to published writers.
The Line Between Us was published by Endeavour Press in 2016, alongside a reissue of Kate’s first novel. Her latest book, The Dragonfly, inspired by many years of boating in France, was published in 2017 after it was shortlisted for the Virginia Prize for Fiction.
Kate has a PhD in Drama from Manchester University.
Sandra Glover
Born in Manchester and now living in South Cumbria, Sandra is a qualified teacher and creative writing tutor, who began writing children’s books in 1997. Sandra is a published children’s author of 26 titles, mainly with Andersen Press and EPS, with ‘Hairy Horror’ being the latest. Her novels for Young Adults and younger readers have been translated into over twenty languages. They have won and been short-listed for awards both in Britain and abroad.
Combining her teaching and writing skills Sandra has run creative writing workshops for children and adults and has sixteen years’ experience as a literary consultant.
Lindsay Hawdon
Lindsay is a former Sunday Times and Telegraph travel columnist and a writer of fiction and has been a writer of fiction and travel for the past 20 years. She still writes regularly for The Sunday Times, the Sunday Telegraph, The Australian and the LA Times among other publications.
On leaving school, she spent three years travelling around Europe, Africa and India, hitching rides and sleeping under canvas. She has since travelled to over seventy countries. Her travel column “An Englishwoman Abroad”, began in the Sunday Telegraph in 2000 and ran for seven years.
Her articles for The Sunday Times, “Have Kids Will travel” followed a year’s trip travelling solo with her two young boys around South East Asia. Their most recent trip, featured in a monthly column for the Independent called “The Rainbow Hunters”, took them around the world to find the origin of colour, raising money for the charity War Child as they travelled.
She has had numerous short stories published and in 2015 her first novel Jakob’s Colours, a historical fiction novel which was shortlisted for The Authors Club First Novel Award, was published by Hodder and Stoughton. She is currently writing her second novel and is represented by Susan Armstrong at Conville and Walsh.
Lindsay has taught fiction, travel and nature writing in a variety of places including residential courses at Bath Spa University and Prior Park College in Bath. She currently works as a mentor and visiting lecturer at Bath Spa University, runs a writer’s workshop now in its third year, and has a wide experience of editing and proofreading.
Fred Johnson
Fred has been professionally writing, editing, and proofreading since graduating with an MPhil in American Literature from Trinity College Dublin in 2015. (Before that, he graduated from the University of Liverpool with first-class honours in English.) During that time, he’s edited manuscripts for companies including BubbleCow, Kirkus Reviews, eBook Launch, the Book Butchers, the Proofreading Company, and Standout Books, and for publishing houses including Oxford University Press, Birlinn, and, most recently, Canongate.
When he’s not editing, Fred is probably trying to chew through his bulging bookshelf or else is working on his own creative work – a published poet and author, he’s especially interested in literary fiction, short stories, creative nonfiction, noir mysteries, and imaginative sci-fi/YA. Fred lives in beautiful Edinburgh, Scotland (sadly, he lacks his own castle – for now).
Mark Leggatt
Mark is a also founder member of the author touring group ‘Four Blokes In Search of a Plot’, a show which performs in theatres and arts venues, and writes a very short improv crime novel live on stage from ideas shouted out by the audience, while discussing all the aspects of being a writer and publishing. Mark is a member of Live Literature for The Scottish Book Trust, performing at venues across Scotland and has appeared at literary festivals across Scotland, including Bloody Scotland and Aye Write. He has also appeared at Thrillerfest in New York for three years running and was invited to participate in Bridges Beyond Boundaries, a literary programme supported by The British Council in India and Scotland, Creative Scotland and the Scottish Government. He is represented by a leading London literary agency.
Mark is the author of five books including a historical fantasy series and an international thriller series published by Fledgling Press including Names of the Dead (2015), The London Cage (2016) and The Silk Road (2018). Mark is an editor for crime, thriller, fantasy, sci-fi, horror, dystopia, tartan noir and police procedural but is always on the lookout for good romance, literary fiction, historical fantasy and magical realism.
Will Mawhood
Will’s meticulous editing skills and eye for detail mean that he specialises in copy-editing for the writing.co.uk authors. After graduating from the University of Liverpool in 2009 with a first-class degree in English Language and Literature, Will Mawhood worked as a teacher of English as a foreign language, copy-editor and literary consultant. As well as successfully mentoring aspiring and published authors of fiction, he has completed dozens of well-received copy-edits and advisory reports for Writing Ltd which have been described as “inspirational”, “thought-provoking” and “exceptionally helpful”.
As well as the UK, Will has lived in Estonia, Latvia, Germany, Romania and Ukraine and travelled widely throughout Europe and beyond. His articles on travel, history and politics in post-Communist Europe have appeared in a variety of publications, and in 2015 he started Deep Baltic (www.deepbaltic.com), the first English-language online source focusing on long-form and in-depth cultural and travel articles from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which has built up a following among those interested to the region. He is currently working on an insider’s guide to Riga, where he spends most of his time, for an international online publication.
Antonia Prescott
Antonia worked for nearly ten years as a children’s book editor at Frances Lincoln Publishers. She has a wide range of expertise covering poetry, story books and fiction and non-fiction picture books.
Antonia is also a freelance writer of educational books for children and a translator. Among her publications are translations of Jacques Duquennoy’s award-winning French picture books, Ghost Party and Loch Ness Ghosts. She lives on the Wirral with her family.
Stuart Sharp
Stuart has been working as ghost writer, editor and freelance writer for over eight years. He writes novels and full-length non-fiction and has spent time writing biographies, producing poetry, writing short stories and non-fiction articles.
Stuart has worked on novels, biographies and short story collections to date and young adult novels encompassing fantasy, thrillers and straightforward teen dramas. Stuart has also worked on two quintets of romance novels for a New York Times Bestselling author, fantasy novels, a detective novel set in medieval Ireland and adaptations of horror scripts and graphic novels to novel format.
Stuart is the author of four published novels and also works on literal translations and editing and feedback for authors at the beginning stage of their work.
Stuart has a PhD in Medieval History, an MA in Historical Studies and a BA (Hons) in History.
Toby Venables
Toby Venables is an award-winning screenwriter, novelist and journalist who lectures to undergraduates in Cambridge (on writing and film). He has written several commissioned film and TV screenplays, and was co-creator and co-writer of the hit Netflix socio-political horror movie His House, which premiered at Sundance 2020 to rave reviews and went on to win four BIFAs and a BAFTA. His other awards to date include an INCA Radio Advertising award, Regional Journalist of the Year 2019 and the Keats-Shelley Memorial Prize 2001.
Toby is also the author of four novels (published by Abaddon Books) including the Hunter of Sherwood trilogy, a series of gritty medieval adventures which cast Guy of Gisburne as the hero and Robin Hood as the psychopathic villain. He is a keen reader of historical fiction, horror and science fiction.
Hannah Vincent
Hannah is a writer, editor and creative writing tutor. She specialises in writing the self/autobiographic practice and memoirs, and is currently completing her PhD at the University of Sussex. She has an MA in creative writing and a degree in Drama and English. Hannah has won awards for Outstanding Creative & Academic Achievement, from Faber & Faber’s Creative Writing MA, she was the Writer in Residence at the Royal National Theatre Studio, and has won a BBC Audio Award for ‘Best Adaptation’.
Hannah’s second novel ‘The Weaning’ was published by Salt in 2018 following her first novel Alarm Girl – a family drama set in South Africa and described as ‘readable holiday fiction with a literary edge’. She is also the author of short stories and radio plays – both of which have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and stage plays that have made appearances at the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs and Sydney Opera House.
Hannah is a fellow of the Royal Literary Fund, a professional mentor, and a tutor on the creative writing programme at New Writing South. She is also an associate lecturer and visiting tutor at a number of institutions including the University of Sussex, Goldsmiths and The Open University.
Hannah has been a script editor for the BBC where she advised on scripts for classic adaptations and original dramas working on productions such as Crime and Punishment, Babyfather, Real Women, Great Expectations and Close Relations.