Nicholas Royle was born in Manchester in 1963. He is the author of seven novels, including: Counterparts, Saxophone Dreams, and First Novel, and a short story collection, Mortality. He has edited sixteen anthologies, including A Book of Two Halves and Neonlit: Time Out Book of New Writing. He lives between London and Manchester and teaches creative writing at MMU. RICHARD LAWRENCE BENNETT is a writer and psychogeographer based in Arundel, West Sussex. His work has been published in Ambit and in the Lounge Companion. He is seeking representation for his debut novel The Ramayana of Croydon about mysticism in south London. You can find out more about him at www.richardlawrencebennett.com. LUKE BROWN is the author of the novels My Biggest Lie (2014) and Theft (2020). He grew up on the coast of Lancashire and works as an editor in London as well as teaching at the University of Manchester. 'Beyond Criticism' was shortlisted and commended for Best Original Fiction in the Stack Awards 2019. David Constantine, born 1944 in Salford, has published several volumes of poetry, a novel and four collections of short stories - Back at the Spike (1994), Under the Dam (2005), The Shieling (2009) and Tea at the Midland (2012). He is an editor and translator of Hoelderlin, Goethe, Kleist and Brecht. He was the winner of the 2010 BBC National Short Story Award and the 2013 Frank O'Connor Award. Tim Etchells is an artist and writer based in Sheffield and London. His work shifts between performance, visual art and fiction. As well as being Professor of Performance and Writing at Lancaster University, he works in a wide variety of contexts, notably as the leader of Sheffield performance group Forced Entertainment. His 2019 collection Endland (And Other Stories) was a reprise (plus new stories) of his 1999 collection Endland Stories (Pulp Books). He was the winner of the 2019 Manchester Fiction Prize. NICOLA FREEMAN started out in arts journalism and publishing and has since worked as a curator, writer and editor in museums and galleries. She has invited contemporary artists of all disciplines to respond to museum collections, including established and emerging writers. She is a Jerwood/Arvon mentee (fiction) 2019/20. 'Halloween' is her first published short story. Amanthi Harris was born in Sri Lanka and grew up in London. She studied Fine Art at Central St Martins and has degrees in Law and Chemistry from Bristol University. Her novella Lantern Evening won the Gatehouse Press New Fictions Prize 2016 and is published by Gatehouse Press (2017). Her short stories have been published by Serpent's Tail and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 as Afternoon Readings. ANDREW HOOK has had over a hundred and fifty short stories published, with several novels, novellas and collections also in print. 'The Girl With the Horizontal Walk' is part of a series of 'Hollywood celebrity death' stories, Candescent Blooms, currently seeking a publisher. Stories from the series have appeared in Ambit and Great Jones Street. Forthcoming are a collection of mostly SF stories, Frequencies of Existence, and O For Obscurity, Or, The Story of N, a fictionalised biography of the Mysterious N Senada written in collaboration with the legendary San Francisco art collective The Residents. SONIA HOPE's short fiction has appeared in magazines including Ambit, Nottingham Review and Ellipsis Zine. She is a Jerwood/Arvon Mentee (Fiction) 2019/20 and was shortlisted for the Guardian 4th Estate BAME Short Story Prize 2019. She is a Librarian and lives in London. HANIF KUREISHI has published eight novels, including, most recently, The Nothing. His most recent book, What Happened?, a collection of stories and essays, was published in 2019. Born in Kent, he now lives in London. HELEN MORT was born in Sheffield and grew up in Chesterfield. She has published two poetry collections, Division Street (2013), and No Map Could Show Them (2016), and one novel, Black Car Burning (2019). Her short story collection, Exire, was published by Wrecking Ball and she co-edited One For the Road: Pubs and Poetry (Smith-Doorstop) with Stuart Maconie. She teaches creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. JEFF NOON is an award-winning novelist, short story writer and playwright, born in Manchester and now living in Brighton. His most recent novels are Slow Motion Ghosts (2019) and Creeping Jenny (2020), the conclusion to the Nyquist Trilogy. Irenosen Okojie is a writer and arts project manager. Her debut novel, Butterfly Fish, won a Betty Trask award and was shortlisted for an Edinburgh International Book Festival First Book Award. Her work has been featured in the Observer, Guardian and Huffington Post, among other publications. Her short stories have been published internationally. She was presented at the London Short Story Festival by Ben Okri as a dynamic writing talent to watch and was featured in the Evening Standard magazine as one of London's most exciting new authors. Her short story collection, Speak Gigantular (Jacaranda Books), was shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize and in the Saboteur Awards, and longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. wwwirenosenokojie.com @IrenosenOkojie K J Orr was born in London. Her short fiction has been broadcast on Radio 4 and published by the Sunday Times, Dublin Review, White Review, Lighthouse and Comma Press, among others. She is Pushcart nominated, and has been shortlisted for awards including the BBC National Short Story Award, the Bridport Prize and the KWS Hilary Mantel International Short Story Prize. Her debut collection, Light Box, will be published in 2016 by Daunt Books. BRIDGET PENNEY, based in Brighton, is the author of Honeymoon with Death and Other Stories (1991, Polygon), and Index, published by Book Works (2008, 2nd edition 2015) as the opening entry in the Semina series of experimental novels, guest-edited by Stewart Home, and Licorice (2020, Book Works). Her stories and non-fiction have appeared in magazines and online. Diana Powell lives in the far west of Wales. Her short fiction has been published in a number of journals and anthologies, such as The Lonely Crowd, Crannog and The Blue Nib. 'Whale Watching' was the 2019 ChipLit Festival winner. Her work has also been placed in a number of other competitions, including the 2016 Sean O'Faolain (long-listed), Over-the-Edge New Writer (short-listed), Cinnamon Press Prize (runner-up). Her novella, Esther Bligh (Holland House Books), was published in 2018 and her short story collection Trouble Crossing the Bridge (The Blue Nib Press) is forthcoming. David Rose was born in 1949 and spent his working life in the Post Office. His debut story was published in the Literary Review (1989), since when he has been widely published in magazines in the UK and Canada. He was joint owner and fiction editor of Main Street Journal. He is the author of two novels, Vault (2011) and Meridian (2015) and one collection, Posthumous Stories (2013). Recent stories have appeared in Gorse. SARAH SCHOFIELD's stories have been published in Lemistry, Bio-Punk, Thought X, Beta Life, Spindles and Conradology (all Comma Press), Spilling Ink Flash Fiction Anthology and Woman's Weekly among others. She has been shortlisted for the Bridport and Guardian Travel Writing competitions and won the Orange New Voices Prize, Writer's Inc and the Calderdale Fiction Prize. She is an Associate Tutor of Creative Writing at Edge Hill University and runs writing courses and workshops in a variety of community settings. She is working on her debut short story collection. Adrian Slatcher was a COBOL programmer for nine years, and currently works on digital innovation projects in Manchester. He has an MA in novel writing from the University of Manchester and his stories and poems have been published in Unthology, VLAK, The Rialto, Confingo, Verse Kraken and elsewhere. He blogs about literature at artoffiction.blogspot.com. NJ STALLARD is a short story writer and poet. Her work has been featured in publications including the White Review, Tank and Ambit. She was the winner of the Aleph Writing Prize 2018. ROBERT STONE was born in Wolverhampton. He works in a press cuttings agency in London. Before that he was a teacher and then foreman of a London Underground station. He has two children and lives with his partner in Ipswich. He has had stories published in Stand, Panurge, The Write Launch, Eclectica, Wraparound South and Confingo. Micro-stories have been published by Palm-Sized Press, 5x5, Star 82 Review and Clover & White. STEPHEN THOMPSON is a novelist, screenwriter and documentary filmmaker. His novels are Toy Soldiers, Missing Joe, Meet Me Under the Westway and No More Heroes. His feature-length TV drama, Sitting in Limbo, about the Windrush Scandal, was screened by the BBC in spring 2020. He is the editor and publisher of the online literary journal, The Colverstone Review. ZAKIA UDDIN is a writer of fiction and non-fiction. She is currently working on a collection of short stories.
