amanda saint
flash fiction
Amanda Saint is a novelist and short story writer. Her stories have been long and shortlisted for, and won various prizes and have been published in anthologies and literary journals. Her debut novel, As If I Were A River, was a NetGalley Top 10 Book of the Month and a Book Magnet Blog Top 20 Book of 2016. She runs Retreat West, which provides creative writing retreats, courses and competitions, and has just launched Retreat West Books indie press.
ibrahim salihu
poetry
Ibrahim Salihu is an author, a poet and practising structural engineer.
A 21st-century truth-tale wordsmith whose forthcoming novel and chapbook: Malignant Minority and When The Sins of The Molluscs Are Washed Ashore are both near completion.
www.amazon.com/Ibrahim-Salihu.
gerard sarnat
poetry
INVASIVE SPECIES/ NURTURE [HUMAN] NATURE
Gerard Sarnat MD has been nominated for Pushcarts and won other prizes. Kaddish for the Country was selected for pamphlet distribution on Inauguration Day nationwide. ‘Amber Of Memory’ was the single poem chosen for his 50th Harvard reunion Dylan symposium; The Harvard Advocate accepted a second. Gerard’s a Stanford professor/healthcare CEO and physician who has built/staffed homeless clinics. Collections: Homeless Chronicles (2010), Disputes, 17s, Melting the Ice King (2016). Married since 1969; he has seven grandkids.
Anna Saunders
poetry
Time after time the same bird is born from the flame
Anna Saunders is the author of Communion, (Wild Conversations Press), Struck, (Pindrop Press) Kissing the She Bear, (Wild Conversations Press), Burne Jones and the Fox ( Indigo Dreams) and Ghosting for Beginners ( Indigo Dreams). Anna is the CEO and founder of Cheltenham Poetry Festival. She has been described as ‘a poet who surely can do anything’ by The North and ‘a poet of quite remarkable gifts’ by Bernard O’Donoghue. Anna’s forthcoming book is called Feverfew. ( Due Indigo Dreams Summer 2020). The collection has been described as ‘ rich with obsession, sensuousness and potency’ by Ben Ray and ‘a beautiful and necessary collection’ by Penny Shuttle.
Sheila Saunders
poetry
Evening Class
Sheila went from a working class home in St Helens, with the help of a State Scholarship, to St Anne’s College, Oxford, to read English Language and Literature. On graduation she worked on bi-weekly and evening papers, in Lancashire, Lincolnshire and Buckinghamshire. After marriage to Peter, Wirral district reporter for the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo, she did freelance and feature writing while bringing up three children, and voluntary work with young people. She has always enjoyed Merseyside’s rich concert, art and theatre scene, amateur music-making, and coastal birding half a mile from her Hoylake home. She has become increasingly involved in wildlife, community, and environmental issues. Motivated by her daughter Anna, a published poet, she has started writing poetry herself, initially inspired by her love of natural history.
jeff schiff
poetry
Notes for the Black Walnut Kingdom
Jeff Schiff is the author of That hum to go by (Mammoth Books, 2012), Mixed Diction, Burro Heart, The Rats of Patzcuaro, The Homily of Infinitude, and Anywhere in this Country. His work has appeared internationally in more than eighty periodicals, including The Alembic, Grand Street, The Ohio Review, Poet & Critic, The Louisville Review, Tendril, Pembroke Magazine, Carolina Review, Chicago Review, Hawaii Review, Southern Humanities Review, River City, Indiana Review, Willow Springs, and The Southwest Review. He has been a professor in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago since 1987.
steve scholey
poetry
ONNELLISUUS ON AIKA HIIHDELLÄ KOIRASI SIVULLA LUONNOSSA
Steve Scholey’s early fascination with rocks, preferably with shiny bits in them, led him into close encounters with trolls in Sweden and with leopards, landmines and AK47s in Zimbabwe. Having discarded his geological hammer in favour of a pen, Steve has featured in various publications and competitions and is currently working on his second and third collections simultaneously. Steve may or may not be an un-disorganiser of the Winchester poetry fringe.
Finola Scott
poetry
The girl who can talk to birds
Finola Scott is widely published including in Gutter, Ink, Sweat & Tears, The Ofi Press and The Fenland Reed. Recently she won the Blue Nib Chapbook competitions and was runner up in Coast to Coast’s pamphlet competition. Her pamphlet is forthcoming from Red Squirrel this winter. Her poetry can be found on fb at Finola Scott Poems.
elisabeth sennitt clough
poetry
A Brief History of Forgotten Local Places
Corvid Haibun
Elisabeth Sennitt Clough is the author of Glass (Best Pamphlet Saboteur Awards 2017) and a full collection, Sightings (Michael Schmidt Award for Best Portfolio). A poem from Sightings was published in the Forward Book of Poetry 2018. Other poems have appeared in The Rialto, Poem, Mslexia, Magma and Stand.
Anne Sherry
poetry
A poet, linguist and traveller, Anne Sherry speaks fluent French and Spanish and gets by in several other languages. Her first career was in International Human Resources; her second in Change, Development and Communications Consulting. She has lived in France, the Czech Republic and Costa Rica. Anne now combines occasional consulting with a range of writing activities, notably poetry and creative non-fiction, and frequent travel. Her first collection, Safe Passage: A Memoir in Poetry and Prose, was published in 2014.
Stephanie shields
FICTION
Brought up in the East Midlands, Stephanie Shields has spent her adult life in the north of England. She has combined sheep farming in the Washburn Valley, north of Leeds, with a career in further education. Stephanie’s first short story ‘The Watershed’ appeared in the Jane Austen bicentenary collection: Dancing with Mr Darcy– stories inspired by Jane Austen and Chawton House, selected and introduced by Sarah Waters and published by Honno Press in the UK and Harper Collins in the USA. Her short fiction and poems have been anthologised, appeared in literary magazines and broadcast on radio. Her flash fiction and poetry have been shortlisted and longlisted for international competitions.
Swan Landings, her first short story collection, was published in October 2017 by The Sheep Shed Press:
sheepshedpress.com
elizabeth spencer spragins
poetry
Sue Spiers
poetry
Sue Spiers is British Mensa’s SIG Sec for Poetry and her first collection is called Jiggle Sac. Her poems have appeared in Acumen, Dream Catcher, South Bank Poetry, among others, and online at: www.inksweatandtears.co.uk and www.thelakepoetry.co.uk.
Her work has been included in the Bloodaxe anthology Hallelujah for 50ft Women and in the Paper Swans Press anthology Best of British.
Michael spring
poetry
Michael Spring was born in 1953 and grew up in post-war London before moving to the Cotswolds in the mid-1960s. After university, he followed a career in Art teaching in Northumberland and in Oxfordshire. He draws much of the inspiration for his artwork and his writing from his travels and from the natural world.
In ‘Marlborough Downs’ he captures the beauty of the place tinged with the poignancy of the solitary walker.
kenneth spring
poetry
Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth Arthur Spring OBE TD (23 October 1921 – 25 December 1997) was a British Army officer, artist and co-founder of the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain. Following active wartime service in the Far East, he became a teacher of Art in South London, and then in Oxfordshire.
His poem ‘The Downs at Dusk’ celebrates the sense of permanence our landscape exuded in 1938, despite the brooding threat of war.
Stephanie Stanton
poetry
Stephanie Stanton is a former science teacher, now teaching primary in a Medway school. Fairly new to writing poetry, she is an enthusiastic member of the mid-Kent Stanza group, occasionally performing at various open mic venues and has recently had a poem published in The Curlew.
richard stillman
poetry
Richard Stillman is Head of English at Winchester College. His poetry has appeared on the Poetry Society blog and has been published in anthologies and online. He is represented by Peters, Fraser and Dunlop, although as he has not yet written a published novel, he is unsure why. A trustee of the Winchester Poetry Festival, he is interested in promoting local poetry and literature.
paul summers
poetry
Paul Summers is a Northumbrian poet who has recently returned to the North East of England after a five-year stint in Central Queensland. His poems have appeared widely in print for almost three decades and he has performed his work all over the world. He was a founding co-editor of the ‘leftfield’ UK magazines Billy Liar and Liar Republic, he has also written for TV, film, radio, theatre and collaborated many times with artists and musicians on mixed-media projects and public art. His latest collection is straya, published by Smokestack Books in April 2017. Previous collections include: primitive cartography, union (new & selected); Three Men on the Metro; big bella’s dirty cafe; cunawabi and the last bus.
susan taylor
poetry
Susan Taylor began writing in her teens in the idyllic setting of her family farm in the Lincolnshire Wolds – Tennyson country. An ex-shepherd, she has become rather a turncoat now, with much sympathy for the plight of the wild wolf. She has seven published poetry collections, including ‘Temporal Bones’, published by Oversteps Books in July 2106.
Susan is a keen performer of her poetry and has developed and toured many collaborative poetry shows, including ‘La Loba – Enchanting the Wild’ and ‘The Weather House’, which appeared as an Indigo Dreams Poetry Pamphlet in 2017.
don Thompson
poetry
Don Thompson has been writing about the San Joaquin Valley for over fifty years, including a dozen or so books and chapbooks. For more info and links to publishers, visit his website at
MC Thompson
poetry
MC Thompson is originally from South London but now lives in Gosport on the south coast of Hampshire. She is an Anglican Priest and shares her Vicarage with a menagerie of rescue animals. When not trying to run the Parish, she is usually to be found tramping through fields, talking to horses or falling off her bicycle. This is her first published poem.
mark totterdell
poetry
Mark Totterdell’s poems have appeared widely in magazines including Agenda, Envoi, Magma, The Rialto and Stand, and have won competitions. His collections are This Patter of Traces (Oversteps Books, 2014) and Mapping (Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2018).
serena trowbridge
poetry
Serena Trowbridge reads a lot of poetry but has only recently started (admitting to) writing it. She lives in Worcestershire where she does a lot of walking and cloud-watching, and in her spare time, she is a lecturer in English Literature at Birmingham City University.
keith tucker
poetry
Nesting
Keith Tucker is an Oxfordshire-based poet who through the mentorship of Elaine Baker has returned to poetry after many, many years in the creative wilderness. Because of his Anglo-Welsh-Canadian background a lot of his work explores identity and belonging as well as relationship and intimacy. In his day job he supports adults with autism and learning disabilities to use poetry and creative writing for self-expression, communication, and advocacy.
thomas tyrrell
poetry
Thomas Tyrrell has recently completed his PhD thesis, ‘Remapping Milton: Place, Space and Influence 1700-1800’. He was awarded the 2017 Terry Hetherington Young Writers Award for poetry and lives in Cardiff.
ruth e. walker
poetry
Ansel’s Winter on the Merced: Black and White Photograph 1938
Award-winning writer Ruth E. Walker’s first short story submission won $1,000 and publication in Canadian Living magazine. With poetry and fiction in Canadian, U.S. and U.K. journals, Ruth hasn’t looked back since. Her novel Living Underground is in second printing, she’s a sought-after editor, popular workshop leader, and facilitates writing retreats at lakeside locations.
rob walton
flash fiction
Lucky for Some
Rob Walton grew up in Scunthorpe and now lives in North Shields. His short fiction and poetry for adults and children appear in various magazines and anthologies. His flashes have been published by 101 words (US), Bangor Literary Journal, Blue Fifth Review (US), Flash Frontier (NZ), Ham, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Number Eleven, National Flash Fiction Day anthologies, Paper Swans, Popshot, Pygmy Giant, Reflex, Spelk and others. He is a past winner and current judge of the UK’s National Flash Fiction Day micro-fiction competition.
angela ward
poetry
Angela Ward is co-owner of Butterfly Cottage Garden Plants. Previously she worked for the NHS. She is a qualified Psychodynamic Counsellor. Angela has been writing poetry for thirty years. Until recently, her poems languished in a cardboard box in her spare room!
anthony watts
poetry
Anthony Watts has been writing ‘seriously’ for over 40 years. He has won prizes in poetry competitions and has had poems published in many magazines and anthologies. His latest collection is The Shell-Gatherer (Oversteps). His main interests are poetry, music, walking and binge thinking – activities which he finds can be happily combined.
david webb
poetry
David Webb writes stories and poems, some of which have been published. Short stories have featured in Hauntings (a ghost story anthology published by Hic Dragones); Sein und Werden magazine; The Casket of Fictional Delights and The Dime Show Review. Poems have appeared in Life is a Roller Coaster (poetry anthology); The Pre-Raphaelite Society Review, and This England Magazine.
sarah westcott
poetry
Mayflower Rising
Sarah Westcott is a freelance writer and former journalist, currently working as poetry tutor at City Lit in London. Her first collection Slant Light, published by Pavilion Poetry, was Highly Commended in the 2017 Forward Prizes and she is working very slowly towards her next book. Her pamphlet Inklings was a Poetry Book Society choice. Her poems have appeared in magazines including Poetry Review, POEM and Magma, on beermats, billboards and the side of buses, and in anthologies including Best British Poetry. Recent awards are first prize in the London Magazine poetry prize and the Manchester Cathedral poetry prize. Sarah grew up in north Devon, on the edge of Exmoor, and lives in Kent with her family.
helen whitten
poetry
Walk to Wardour Castle with Stevie Smith
Helen Whitten is a writer and prize-winning poet. She is the winner of the Elmbridge Literary Festival Adult Poetry Prize 2014 and the Winchester Writers’ Festival 2013 Poetry Prize. Her poem ‘Fantasy Life’ was Highly Commended in the Elmbridge Literary Festival 2016 and her poem ‘Moonfleet’ was Highly Commended in the Winchester Writers’ Festival 2014. Her first collection of poetry, The Alchemist’s Box was published by Morgan’s Eye Press in 2015. Helen has had her work published in a broad range of journals and anthologies, including Orbis, Acumen, Loose Muse, South Bank Poetry, Poetry in the Afternoon, and the Winchester Writers’ Festival Almanac.
Visit: her poetry website www.babyboomerpoetry.com
Helen’s YouTube poetry channel
Thinking Aloud blog www.helenwhitten.com
Louise wilford
poetry
Desert
patrick williamson
poetry
Patrick Williamson lives near Paris, France. His latest collections are Beneficato (English-Italian, Samuele Editore, 2015), Hold your tongue (Harmattan, 2014), Gifted (Corrupt Press, 2014), and Nel Santuario (Samuele Editore, 2013; Menzione speciale della Giuria in the XV Concorso Guido Gozzano, 2014). He is the editor and translator of The Parley Tree, An Anthology of Poets from French-speaking Africa and the Arab World (Arc Publications, 2012), and translated notably Tahar Bekri, Gilles Cyr, Guido Cupani and Erri de Luca.
Photo by Dino Ignani
Karen Wolf
poetry
Karen Wolf has been published in Smokey Blue Literary and Art Magazine, The Wagon Magazine, Oasis Journal, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, The Bookends Review, The Drunken Llama, Blynkt, Raw Dog Press, Street Light Press, Lady Blue Literary Arts Journal, Ripcord Magazine and many others. Her chapbook, THAT’S JUST THE WAY IT IS, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2018.
Sue wrinch
poetry
Sue Wrinch is a poet and organiser/presenter of Loose Muse for writers at Winchester Discovery Centre. Her first poetry collection, Down By Wild Water, was published in 2015. Her poems are in numerous anthologies: 154 Poems By 154 Contemporary Poets, (Live Canon, 2016); The Woven Tale Press Vol. IV: and a poetic dialogue with Dr Richard Brown, Leads to Leeds.
Poems have been highly commended and also won second prize in the Elmbridge Poetry Competition and commissioned by Live Canon for the Pink Floyd Exhibition at the V&A. Sue was director of the UK-India Festival of Words in 2017. She is currently working on her second collection.
stella wulf
poetry
Stella Wulf’s poems have appeared in Obsessed With Pipework, The High Window, Riggwelter, Prole, Ink Sweat & Tears, The New European, The Sentinel Quarterly (placed third in their 2013 competition), and other publications. Anthologies include The Very Best of 52, three drops from a cauldron, Clear Poetry, NILVX A Book Of Magic, and #MeToo. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University. Stella is co-editor of 4Word Press who published her first pamphlet, After Eden, in May 2018.
steve xerri
poetry
Steve Xerri is a former teacher, musician & designer now engaged in poetry & pottery. He was Canterbury Festival Poet of the Year 2017 and is published in Acumen, Amaryllis, Brittle Star, Clear Poetry, Envoi, Ink Sweat and Tears, The Interpreter’s House, The Poetry Shed, Poetry Society Newsletter (Members’ Poems), Proletarian Poetry and Stride Magazine.
jeffrey yamaguchi
poetry
Lone Tree on Abandoned Pier
Jeffrey Yamaguchi creates projects with words, photos, and video as art explorations, as well as through his work in the publishing industry.
jo young
poetry
Jo Young is a winner of the 2017 Ink Sweat &Tears/Café Writers Pamphlet Commission Competition and her first pamphlet ‘Firing Pins’ (November 2019) is published by IS&T Press. She lives in York with her young family and has served in the Army for over 20 years. Jo’s poetry has appeared in several anthologies and publications.
kate young
poetry
Kate Young is a semi-retired teacher living in Kent. Her poetry has been published in webzines including Nitrogen House, Nine Muses Poetry and Ekphrastic Review. She particularly enjoys responding to Ekphrastic challenges as she also loves Art and painting. Kate is presently working on her pamphlet ‘Turning Stones Over’.
Find her on Twitter: @Kateyoung12poet