Kellie is originally from Australia but has been happily settled in South London for many years. She holds a BA in English Literature and an MA in Creative Writing from Goldsmiths College. Kellie’s short stories have aired on BBCRadio4. In 2016 she set up Words Away, a popular series of monthly salons and workshops bringing published and aspiring writers together to explore the writing process. She’s currently working on a novel set in the UK and Australia and you can read an extract here, published as part of an online anthology celebrating place by Blue Door Press.

Twitter: @WordsAwayUk

Andrew Wille has devoted his career to working with books and writers. As senior editor at Little, Brown in London, he edited and acquired many bestselling and critically acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction. Subsequently, as a freelance editor he has worked for most of the UK’s largest publishers as well as many independent presses. He has also lived in the United States and Australia, and has studied and taught at Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado, where he developed a strong interest in contemplative and holistic approaches to writing and creativity. Andrew regularly speaks and offers editorial guidance at writing events, and as a book doctor supports many writers from the start of new projects through to publication and beyond. He also writes fiction and nonfiction. More information as well as resources on writing and publishing can be found at wille.org

Twitter: @andrewwille

Previous Events

Workshops:

Everyday Magic: The Four Elements of Creativity

The Craft of Revising

The Craft of Plotting

Salons: Make Your Novel Shine, Revising and Editing

Zalons: Words In Action: mindfulness in writing and publishing

Evie Wyld is the author of four novels The Bass Rock, All the Birds Singing and After the Fire, a Still Small Voice. The Echoes, her next novel will come out in 2024. She has also published a graphic memoir Everything is Teeth with illustrator Joe Sumner.

She is the recipient of the Miles Franklin Award, The Stella Prize, the European Union Prize, the Jerwood Fiction Prize and the Encore Award. In 2013 she was included in Granta’s list of Best of Young British Novelists. She helps run an independent Bookshop in Peckham, called Review.

Twitter: @eviewyld

Diana Evans was born and brought up in London. Her bestselling debut novel, 26a, won the inaugural Orange Award for New Writers and the British Book Awards deciBel Writer of the Year prize. It was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel, the Guardian First Book, the Commonwealth Best First Book and the Times/Southbank Show Breakthrough awards, and nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her second novel, The Wonder, was also published to critical acclaim, described by The Times as ‘the most dazzling depiction of the world of dance since Ballet Shoes‘. Evans was nominated for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction for her third novel, Ordinary People, which was a New Yorker, New Statesman and Financial Times book of the year, was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, and won the South Bank Sky Arts Award for Literature. Her fourth novel, A House for Alice, is the highly acclaimed follow-up, for which she was again shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. Evans is a former dancer, and her journalism, criticism and essays appear in among others Time Magazine, Vogue, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Observer, The New York Review of Books and Harper’s Bazaar. She has been an associate lecturer in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Website: diana-evans.com

Twitter: @DianaEvansOP

Words Away events:

Unfinished Business: Revisiting Characters and Creating New Stories

Identity and Belonging: Writing Character and Place

Meryl Pugh lives in East London and teaches creative writing, most recently for the Poetry School. She is the author of three pamphlets and one collection of poetry. Natural Phenomena (2018, Penned in the Margins) was a Poetry Book Society Guest Choice and longlisted for the Laurel Prize. Her non-fiction debut, Feral Borough, was published in 2022 by Penned in the Margins.

Twitter: @merylE11

Website: furtive11.wordpress.com

Claire Fuller is the author of five novels. The Memory of Animals will be published in April 2023. Her previous, Unsettled Ground, won the Costa Novel Award 2021 and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her first, Our Endless Numbered Days won the 2015 Desmond Elliott Prize, her second, Swimming Lessons was shortlisted for the Encore prize, and her third, Bitter Orange was on the International Dublin Literary Award longlist. Her books have been translated into more than 20 languages. Claire also writes flash fiction and short stories. Many have been published, and she has won the BBC Opening Lines short story competition, and the Royal Academy / Pin Drop prize.

Words Away events:

Zalon: Imagining & Writing Literary Dystopias

Grow Your Own: motivation and inspiration for creative writers

All Is Not What It Seems: How Memory and the Past Drive a Narrative

Twitter: @ClaireFuller2

Instagram: @writerclairefuller

Website: clairefuller.co.uk

Federico Andornino is currently Executive Publisher at Sceptre, the literary imprint of Hodder & Stoughton, acquiring literary fiction with an edge, LGBTQ+ literature, graphic novels and fiction in translation.

Previously, he was Publishing Director at Weidenfeld and Nicolson, the literary imprint of the Orion Publishing Group, where he published authors including Clare Chambers (Small Pleasures), the Reverend Richard Coles (Murder Before Evensong), Arinze Ifeakandu (God’s Children Are Little Broken Things), Meg Mason (Sorrow and Bliss), Tiffany McDaniel (Betty), Charlotte Wood (The Weekend) and Jacqueline Woodson (Red at the Bone).

Twitter: @MrFeditor

Tom Conaghan is the publisher of Scratch Books - a small press dedicated to the craft of the short story. In its Reverse Engineering series, celebrated writers discuss the inspiration and decisions that led them to their finest stories.

Tom's reviews and essays have appeared in The Observer, The TLS, The Irish Times, The LA Review of Books, amongst others. He is also the commissioning editor at The Word Factory.

Zalon: Writing Short Stories

Scratch Books

Reverse Engineering series

Twitter: @TomConagh

Lily Dunn is an author and mentor. Her memoir, Sins of My Father: A Daughter, A Cult, A Wild Unravelling is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (March 2022), and her novel, Shadowing the Sun, by Portobello Books (2007). She has personal essays in Granta, Litro, Hinterland, MIRonline and The Real Story, and is a regular writer for Aeon magazine. She is in her final writing up year of her doctorate at Birkbeck, University of London, and is interested in how to integrate the therapeutic power of writing with literature. She is co-editor of A Wild and Precious Life: Recovery Anthology, with Zoe Gilbert (Unbound 2021). She teaches creative writing at Bath Spa University and co-runs London Lit Lab.

Find Lily online: LilyDunn.co.uk & londonlitlab.co.uk

Twitter: @Lilydunnwriter

Zoe's first novel, Folk (Bloomsbury), was shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and adapted for BBC Radio (read by the brilliant Samantha Spiro). She has just finished turning some of the chapters from Folk into a libretto, for a song cycle that will have its world premiere in 2023.

Her second novel, Mischief Acts (Bloomsbury), is released in March 2022, and is inspired by the past and future of the Great North Wood, which used to cover a large swathe of South London.

Since completing Mischief Acts, Zoe has moved from London to the Kent coast, which is (not surprisingly) influencing her third novel. It turns out that place - alongside folklore, nature and social history - is a starting point for her writing.

Besides novels, Zoe has been writing short stories for most of her adult life. You can find a few of them in anthologies by Comma Press, and they have also appeared in books and journals worldwide including The Stinging Fly, Mechanics' Institute Review, and the British Fantasy Society Journal. Some of her stories have won prizes, including the Costa Short Story Award.

Zoe is co-founder of London Lit Lab with Lily Dunn, where she teaches creative writing, and the co-editor with Lily of A Wild and Precious Life (Unbound 2021), an anthology of writers in recovery.

Photo credit: Sophie Davidson

Wordsaway Zalon: Unconventional Storytelling

Previous salon: Folkore, Fables and Fairy Tales: enrich your fiction

Find Zoe online: zoegilbert.com & londonlitlab.co.uk

Twitter: @mindandlanguage

Leone Ross was born in England and grew up in Jamaica. Her first novel, All the Blood Is Red, was longlisted for the Orange Prize, and her second novel, Orange Laughter, was chosen as a BBC Radio 4 Women’s Hour Watershed Fiction favourite. Her short fiction has been widely anthologised and her first short-story collection, the 2017 Come Let Us Sing Anyway was nominated for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize, the Jhalak Prize, the Saboteur Awards and the OCM BOCAS Prize. Ross has taught creative writing for twenty years, at University College Dublin, Cardiff University and Roehampton University in London. She is editor of the first black British anthology of speculative fiction, due out in 2022 with Peepal Tree Press. Prior to writing fiction, Ross worked as a journalist. Leone Ross lives in London but intends to retire near water.

website: leoneross.com

twitter: @leoneross

Words Away zalon: Writing Fiction Through a Magical Lens

The Art and Craft of Writing Sex in Fiction

Anna is the award-winning author of three Gothic historical thrillers plus one ghost novel and she is currently writing a contemporary thriller. Her debut novel, The Unseeing, won an Edgar Allan Poe award in the US. Her third novel, The Clockwork Girl, set in 18th century Paris, reached number 11 in the Sunday Times Chart. Her fourth novel, The House of Whispers is a ghost story set in Fascist Italy and will be published in April 2023. She is a writing tutor at The Novelry and loves discussing story structure and the writing process.

Anna is also a human rights and criminal justice solicitor and provides training to other advocates. She lives in Camberwell, South London, with one husband, two children and a snake.

‘Spellbinding, gripping, immersive and deliciously gothic…No one gets under history's skin like Anna Mazzola.’ ― ERIN KELLY

Photo credit: Shannon Jensen-Wedgwood

Find Anna online at

annamazzola.com

Twitter: @Anna_Mazz

Facebook: AnnaMazzolaWriter

Instagram: @annamazzolawriter

Words Away Zalon: What Lies Beneath: Writing Gothic Fiction

Scott Pack has worked in the book industry for more than twenty years. He was head of buying for Waterstones before becoming a publisher and spending several years at HarperCollins. He now divides his time between his role as associate lecturer in Publishing at Oxford Brookes University, offering freelance editorial support to authors, and as a specialist subject question writer for the BBC quiz show, Mastermind. His latest book, Tips from a Publisher, is out now.

Website: meandmybigmouth

Twitter: @meandmybigmouth

Words away Salon: Tips from a Publisher

Nikesh Shukla is a novelist and screenwriter. He is the author of Coconut Unlimited (shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award), Meatspace and the critically acclaimed The One Who Wrote Destiny. Nikesh is a contributing editor to the Observer Magazine and was previously their columnist. Nikesh is the editor of the bestselling essay collection, The Good Immigrant, which won the reader's choice at the Books Are My Bag Awards. He co-edited The Good Immigrant USA with Chimene Suleyman. He is the author of two YA novels, Run, Riot (shortlisted for a National Book Award) and The Boxer (longlisted for the Carnegie Medal). Nikesh was one of Time Magazine’s cultural leaders, Foreign Policy magazine's 100 Global Thinkers and The Bookseller's 100 most influential people in publishing in 2016 and in 2017. He is the co-founder of the literary journal, The Good Journal and The Good Literary Agency. Nikesh is a fellow of the Royal Society Of Literature and a member of the Folio Academy. Nikesh’s new book, Brown Baby: A Memoir Of Race, Family And Home was released on Bluebird in February 2021. He is also the host of the Brown Baby Podcast

Website: nikesh-shukla.com

Words Away Zalon: Writing Memoir

Helen Cullen is an Irish writer living in London. Her second novel, The Truth Must Dazzle Gradually, is out now.

Helen worked at RTE (Ireland’s national broadcaster) for seven years before moving to London in 2010.

Her debut novel, The Lost Letters of William Woolf was published by Penguin in July 2018 in the UK, Ireland, Australia and South Africa and published in America by Harper Collins in June 2019. The novel is also available in translation in numerous foreign markets including Italy, Germany, Russia, Greece and Israel where it hit the bestseller charts. The Lost Letters of William Woolf has also been optioned for television by Mainstreet Pictures. The novel also garnered Helen a Best Newcomer nomination in the An Post Irish Book Awards 2018.

Her second novel, The Truth Must Dazzle Gradually, was published in Ireland and the UK and as The Dazzling Truth in the USA and Canada in August 2020.

Helen holds an M.A. Theatre Studies from UCD, an M.A. English Literature at Brunel University and commenced a PhD in Creative and CriticalWriting at the University of East Anglia in October 2020..

She is now writing full-time and also contributes to the Irish Times newspaper and Sunday Times Magazine.

Helen also offers editorial services and mentorship for emerging writers. For further information go to: helencullen.com

You can find Helen on Twitter, instagram and Facebook as @wordsofhelen

Words Away Zalon: The Mother Land: writing the mother in fiction

Courttia Newland has published seven works of fiction including his debut, The Scholar. His latest novel, The Gospel According to Cane, was published in 2013. The forthcoming novel, A River Called Time and a collection of speculative fiction stories Cosmogramma, will be published by Canongate in 2021. Newland’s short stories have appeared in many anthologies, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and included in Best of British Short Stories 2017. He has been awarded the Tayner Barbers Award for science fiction writing and the Roland Rees Bursary for playwriting. He was previously associate lecturer in creative writing at the University of Westminster and is completing a PhD in creative writing. As a screenwriter he has written two feature length films for the Steve McQueen BBC series Small Axe, of which Lovers Rock was jury selected for Cannes, and opens New York Film Fest 2020. Impact, a feature, and The Future Isn’t What It Used to Be, a science fiction short, are currently in development with Film Four.

Words Away Zalon: Writing Speculative Fiction: unlocking the art of storytelling

Words Away Salon: The Power of Place

Twitter: @courttianewland

Ariatu PR Founder, Ronke Lawal, was born in Hackney, East London. Having graduated with honours from Lancaster University and the University of Richmond Virginia (USA) with a degree in International Business (Economics), she started her own PR and Communications business in 2004. Ariatu PR specialises in PR and Communications for clients in a range of B2C industries; including lifestyle, consumer goods & the creative enterprise sector.

In January 2010, Ronke became the Chief Executive of the Islington Chamber of Commerce where she remained until the end of 2012 and became a non-executive director of The Hoxton Apprentice in 2011. She joined the board of Trustees of Voluntary Action Islington in 2012 and was on The Employers Panel for the National Employment Savings Trust from 2011-18. In 2018 she became a director on the board of directors at the Charted Institute of Public Relations. She is a Mentor for The Cherie Blair Foundation, The “Success Looks Like You” Initiative and The BME PR Pros initiative as well as a mentor to entrepreneurs and creatives outside of structured initiatives. In 2010 Ronke was named as one of the Top 400 women of the year in the UK for her work with the Islington Chamber of Commerce. In 2011 Ronke was honoured to receive a Precious Award for Inspirational Leadership. In 2019 Ronke received an alumni award from Lancaster University for making a substantial contribution to her field of work and developed an outstanding reputation among her peers.

Ronke is currently a Fellow of the RSA (Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce). In 2020 Ronke won the award for PR & Comms Influencer of the Year at the Vuelio online influence awards.

She is a passionate advocate for enterprise and equality and equity through diverse and inclusive leadership. She is regularly invited to facilitate training in personal branding, PR strategy and media training as well as an active public speaker. She is regularly invited onto a variety of media platforms to offer her insights on pop culture, current affairs, business and more.

Her varied passions outside the business world include food (Founder of Food Blog www.whosfordinner.co.uk), travel, music, literature and most importantly living a life she loves.

Ariatu PR

ronkelawal.com

Connect with Ronke on LinkedIn, tweet her @ronkelawal and watch her business videos on YouTube.

Words Away Zalon: Social Networking For The Reluctant Writer

Bhanu Kapil was born in England to Indian parents. She taught for twenty years at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, and for Goddard College in Vermont for fourteen years (where she still teaches). She is the author of six books of poetry/prose: The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers (Kelsey Street Press, 2001), Incubation: a space for monsters (Leon Works, 2006/Kelsey Street Press, 2021), humanimal [a project for future children] (Kelsey Street Press, 2009), Schizophrene (Nightboat, 2011), Ban en Banlieue (Nightboat, 2015) and How to Wash a Heart (Pavilion Poetry 2020), which was a Poetry Book Society Choice. Bhanu has returned to live in the UK, and is currently an artist by-fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge.

Words Away Zalon: The Fragment Is…

Nelle Andrew joined RML in 2020. She previously worked as an agent at Peters Fraser and Dunlop for eleven years, and prior to that at Macmillan publishers. Nelle represents an array of internationally bestselling and award-winning authors across both fiction and non-fiction. Among those on her list are Sara Collins (winner of the Costa Debut fiction award), Jing-Jing Lee (a longlistee for the Women’s Fiction Prize and Walter Scott prize), Beth Underdown and Cecilia Ekback (HWA Goldsboro Award winners) and six Richard and Judy book club picks such as the bestselling Heidi Perks, Bryony Gordon and Elizabeth Day.

Nelle was a Bookseller Rising Star in 2016 and was shortlisted for Agent of the Year in 2018. Nelle also became a published author in her own right under the name Nelle Davy. She helped to build the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize for Unpublished Authors into one of the most eminent prizes for unpublished voices, and sat on the original board for The Sunday Times/PFD Young Writer’s Award.

Twitter: @Nelle_Andrew

Website: rachelmillsliterary.co.uk

Words Away zalon: How Agents and Writers Work Together

Caoilinn Hughes’ first novel Orchid & the Wasp (2018) won the Collyer Bristow Prize and was a finalist for four other prizes. Her poetry collection Gathering Evidence (2014) won the Irish Times Shine/Strong Award. Her short fiction has been awarded the Moth Short Story Prize and an O.Henry Prize. Her second novel, The Wild Laughter, was published in June 2020.

Twitter: @CaoilinnHughes

Words Away Salon: Creating Characters in Fiction: voice and dialogue

Lennie Goodings is Chair of Virago Press. Her authors  include Margaret Atwood, Sarah Waters, Marilynne Robinson, Maya Angelou, Sarah Dunant, Sandi Toksvig, Linda Grant, Natasha Walter, Naomi Wolf, among many other writers. While still acquiring and editing for Virago, Lennie has written and published her own book, A Bite of the Apple: A Life with Books, Writers and Virago (February 2020). Part memoir, part history of Virago, it contains Lennie's stories and reflections on over forty years of feminist publishing. She is Canadian, married, the mother of two and lives in London.

 She was part of the second generation of Viragos – joining full time in 1979, four years after it published its first book: an amazingly exciting and dynamic time in the women’s movement.  She has gone through all of Virago’s rebirth and reincarnations: original independence; part of the Chatto,Virago,Cape Bodley Head Group; one of the team who did the management buy-out;  and part of the Board who sold the imprint to Little,Brown in 1995.  Lennie Goodings won Editor and Imprint of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2010 and this year was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by London’s Southbank’s Women of the World Festival.

Twitter: @Lennie_Virago

Zalon: Publishing and Editing: Books, Writers and Virago

Read: Inside the feminist publisher that upended the literary world by Melissa Benn in The New Statesmen

Words Away Salon: Being Edited and Being Published: What Every Writer Needs To Know

Words Away Workshop guest: The Craft of Revising

Emma Darwin’s new memoir, This is Not a Book About Charles Darwin, was published in February 2019 and the Daily Mail described it as “a fascinating journey…a masterclass”. Her debut novel, The Mathematics of Love, is possibly the only novel ever nominated for both the Commonwealth Writers Best First Book, and Romantic Novelists’ Association Novel of the Year; her second novel. A Secret Alchemy, was a Sunday Times bestseller as well as forming the major part of her PhD in Creative Writing from Goldsmiths. Emma’s blog This Itch of Writing gave rise to Get Started in Writing Historical Fiction which publisher Scott Pack describes as “essential reading”. She has taught for the Open University, now chiefly mentors and tutors individual writers, and is a regular guest lecturer and speaker at university creative writing departments and writers’ conferences.

Website: emmadarwin.com

Blog: This Itch of Writing

Twitter: @emma_darwin

Zalon: Plot Holes and Saggy Middles: a road map for structuring your novel

Words Away workshop: Life Writing and Memoir

Words Away salon: The Art of Failure: resilience and the writer

Charlotte Wood is the author of six novels and two books of non-fiction. Her new novel is The Weekend, which is to be published internationally and has been shortlisted for the Stella Prize and the Indie Book Award in 2020.

Her previous novel, The Natural Way of Things, won the 2016 Stella Prize, the 2016 Indie Book of the Year and Novel of the Year, was joint winner of the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction.

Her non-fiction works include The Writer’s Room, a collection of interviews with authors about the creative process, and Love & Hunger, a book about cooking. Her features and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Literary Hub, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Saturday Paper among other publications. In 2019 she was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for significant services to literature, and was named one of the Australian Financial Review's 100 Women of Influence.

Her latest project is a new podcast, The Writer's Room with Charlotte Wood, in which she interviews authors, critics and other artists about the creative process.

Words Away Zalon: Writing Relationships: exploring character and place

Website: charlottewood.com.au

Facebook: @charlottewoodau

Essay: As we shovel in distractions, the inner life grows dim: The Sydney Morning Herald

Image credit ‘Photo: Chris Chen’

Emma Jane Unsworth is an award-winning novelist and screenwriter. Her latest novel, ADULTS, a comedy about a thirty-something woman whose life is falling apart, is published by The Borough Press and has been described as a “witty” and “virtuoso” satire by The Guardian and “sharp and funny” by The Times. Her previous novel, ANIMALS, was adapted into a film, for which Unsworth wrote the screenplay. The film premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2019 and Unsworth won the award for Best Debut Screenwriter at the British Independent Film Awards 2019. She also writes for television and various magazines. She is currently adapting ADULTS for television, as well as writing a memoir about post-natal depression that is not depressing.

Website: emmajaneunsworth.com

Twitter: @emjaneunsworth

Words Away Zalon: How Screenwriting Made Me A Better Novelist

Photo: Felicity McCabe for The Guardian

Favourite bookshop: city-books.co.uk

Amanda Craig is the author of seven novels, including A Vicious Circle, Hearts and Minds (Long-listed for the Women's Prize) and The Lie of the Land (Radio 4 Book At Bedtime). Although each novel can be read on its own, they are part of an inter-related series about contemporary life in which minor characters become major ones, and vice versa. Often satirical, romantic and concerned with crime, she has been called a "State of the nation" novelist, and most often compared to Dickens, Trollope, Kate Atkinson and Evelyn Waugh. Her eight novel, The Golden Rule, is published in June 202 by Little,Brown and about two women, one rich and one poor, who meet on the London to Penzance train and agree to murder each other's husbands....

Also a critic and journalist she writes for many publications including the Guardian, the New Statesman, the Telegraph and the Spectator. She was the children's books critic for the Times for over a decade, and one of the first to review Philip Pullman, JKRowling, Cressida Cowell and Malorie Blackman among others.

She has said that she sees her job as a novelist is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.

Website: amandacraig.com

Twitter: @AmandaPCraig

Words Away salon: Parallel Worlds: writing recurring characters and serial fiction

Artist and author Sally Kindberg has a vast experience of working on books and features, and running workshops for both children and adults. She has illustrated a series of four comic strip books for Bloomsbury, including The Comic Strip History of the World and The Comic Strip History of Space, The Comic Strip Greek Myths and an anthology – The Comic Strip Big Fat Book of Knowledge.

Sally recently wrote and illustrated an eight-book series of Draw It! books for Bloomsbury, and ten comic strips for CBBC as well as working on new comic strip stories, assembling and writing about her Museum of Dust and taking her Hat of Surprise along to various workshops.

See sallykindberg.co.uk for more examples of children’s books, editorial illustration, travel writing, interview features & comic strips.

Blog: sallykindberg.co.uk/notebook

Twitter: @SKindbergia

Words Away Workshop Guest: Water Ways: A Four Elements workshop on feeling, tone and perspective in writing

Born and raised South Londoner, lover of books (obviously), and writer of contemporary fiction. A former publicist at Penguin Random House, turned managing editor at Cornerstones Literary Consultancy, turned full-time writer. My debut novel, Sofia Khan is not Obliged, and its sequel, The Other Half of Happiness, (Zaffre), were dubbed as the 'Muslim Bridget Jones.' My latest novel, This Green and Pleasant Land, (Zaffre) is out now. I've also contributed to the anthology, A Change is Gonna Come, (Stripes Publishing), and upcoming collection, A Match Made in Heaven, (Hope Road Publishing). Also known for ghost-writing Great British Bake Off winner, Nadiya Hussain's, adult books.

Website: ayishamalik.com

Twitter: @Ayisha_Malik

Words Away Salon: Writing Humour In Fiction

Alice Jolly is a novelist and playwright.  She published a memoir in 2015 called ‘Dead Babies and Seaside Towns’ which won the Pen Ackerley Prize and one of her short stories won the 2014 V. S. Pritchett Memorial Prize, awarded by The Royal Society of Literature. She has also published two novels with Simon and Schuster and four of her plays have been produced by the professional company of the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham. She teaches creative writing on the Mst at Oxford University. Her novel ‘Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile’ was published by Unbound in June 2018. It was a Walter Scott Prize recommended novel for 2109, was on the longlist for the Ondaatje Prize awarded by the Royal Society of Literature and was runner up for the Rathbones Folio Prize. Her new novel ‘Between the Regions of Kindness’ was published in April 2019. She is working on a new novel about Dr Asperger which has been funded by the Arts Council and the Authors’ Fund at the Society of Authors.       

Website: alicejolly.com

Twitter: @JollyAlice

Words Away Masterclass: Creating a Scene

Words Away Salon: Recovering Voices and Stories Lost From History

Guardian book review of Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile

Amy Winchester is the Head of Publicity at Unbound, where her publicity campaign for 2016's breakout hit The Good Immigrant was shortlisted for a PPC Award. The most data-driven publisher on earth, and the first ever to use crowdfunding, Unbound’s mission is to disrupt the industry by bringing authors into direct communication with readers and delivering books that don’t fit the mould.

Website: unbound.com

Twitter: @unbounders & @winchcognito

Words Away masterclass, guest speaker: Creating a Scene with Alice Jolly

Richard Beswick is Managing Director of Little, Brown & Abacus (part of the Little, Brown Book Group), publisher of (among others) Nelson Mandela, Donna Tartt, Alexander McCall Smith, Iain Banks, Tim Harford and, of course, Robert Winder.

Little, Brown & Abacus

Twitter: @richhardb3swick

Words Away workshop guest: Life Writing and Memoir Workshop with Emma Darwin

Words Away Salon: Being Edited and Being Published: what every writer needs to know

Kate is a storyteller and theatre-maker with a particular interest in facilitation and community arts. 

 Kate's directing career began almost thirty years ago as a staff director at the National Theatre of Germany in Hamburg. She went on to tour with the English Shakespeare company, and run the Community department at the Orange Tree Theatre, before establishing herself as a freelance director and arts practitioner, working with theatres - including The RSC, The Royal Albert Hall, The Watermill, Bath Theatre Royal, Salisbury Playhouse, Watford Palace, Newcastle Theatre Royal, Theatre Clywd and many more - arts centres, schools and community organisations around the world.

 She has been a freelance associate in the National Theatre's learning department for over 20 years, working with adults and young people of all ages, directing shows, and devising creative participatory projects (her most recent NT project was a devised Living History production based on War Horse, with 4 actors and 180 primary school children, performed to the Duchess of Sussex). She also co-leads the NT learning’s diversity programme in facilitation training.

Kate has taught drama for the primary classroom at London South Bank University, and is a visiting tutor for New York University in London, where she teaches The Arts in London, Storytelling and Shakespeare. She has created programmes for many different groups and communities, ranging from refugees to injured veterans, and she also facilitates theatre-based communication skills workshops for professionals across the world.

 Kate loves working with writers on improv and voice. She collaborates regularly with playwrights at the NT, and has devised an improv workshop with author Shelley Harris, and a voice workshop with agent Jo Unwin. She is delighted to be working with Andrew and Kellie to explore the relationship between writing and Fire. 

Twitter: @katebeales13

Words Away workshop guest: Finding Your Fire: A Four Elements workshop on writing and creativity

Paul Burston is the critically-acclaimed author of six novels and editor of two short story collections. His last novel The Black Path was longlisted for the Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize 2016 and became a Number One bestseller at WH Smith. Lovers & Losers (2007) was shortlisted for a Stonewall Award. The Gay Divorcee (2009) was optioned for television. Paul is curator and host of award-winning LGBT+ literary salon Polari at London's Southbank Centre and founder of The Polari First Book Prize for debut writers and The Polari Prize for established writers. In 2016, he was featured in the British Council's Global List, celebrating '33 visionary people who are promoting freedom, equality and LGBT rights around the world.' His new psychological thriller The Closer I Get was published on July 11, 2019 by Orenda Books and is available now from all good bookshops.

Photo by Krystyna FitzGerald-Morris

paulburston.com

Twitter: @PaulBurston

Words Away Salon: Psychological Thrillers: creating dark and addictive fiction

Caroline (writing as Cass) Green’s debut adult novel The Woman Next Door was a Number 1 e-book bestseller and her second, In A Cottage, In A Wood was a Sunday Times top ten and USA Today bestseller. Don’t You Cry is her third standalone thriller. She is also an award-winning author of fiction for young people. Her first novel, Dark Ride won the RONA Young Adult Book of the Year and the Waverton Good Read Award. Cracks was recommended on Radio 4’s Open Book programme and Hold Your Breath won the Oldham Book Award. She is the Writer in Residence at East Barnet School and teaches crime fiction at City University and children’s fiction for Writers and Artist’s Yearbook.

Words Away Salon: Plot And Story & guest co-host: The Art of Failure: resilience and the writer

Visit Caroline's website: cassgreen.co.uk

Twitter: @carolinesgreen

Adam Marek is the award-winning author of two short story collections: The Stone Thrower and Instruction Manual for Swallowing. He won the 2011 Arts Foundation Short Story Fellowship, and was shortlisted for the inaugural Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award. His stories have appeared on BBC Radio 4, and in many magazines and anthologies, including The Penguin Book of the British Short Story. He teaches creative writing regularly for the Arvon Foundation, WordFactory, Comma Press and the creative writing group at Google London. Visit Adam online at adammarek.co.uk and on Twitter at @adammarek

Words Away salon: Miracle in a Matchbox: the Art of the Short Story

Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott was born and raised in Houston, Texas, before coming to call first Los Angeles, then London her adopted homes. She studied Directing at Carnegie Mellon University, screenwriting at the University of Southern California, and has been honoured by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as a Finalist for the Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting. She graduated from UEA’s Creative Writing Prose Fiction MA with distinction. Kelleigh was the winner of the 2015 Bridport Prize Peggy Chapman- Andrews Award for a first novel. She was additionally shortlisted for the Historical Novel Society New Novel Award, the Myriad Editions Competition and the Lucy Cavendish College Fiction Prize. Swan Song, her first novel, was published in 2018 by Penguin Random House/ Hutchinson. It was named one of the Books of the Year by The Times, and has been longlisted for the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Twitter: @kgjephcott

Words Away Salon: Voice: The Writer’s Palette

Faiza S Khan is an editor, columnist and critic. She is a consulting publisher at Bloomsbury Publishing in London. She has previously been based in South Asia, and worked as editor-in-chief of Bloomsbury India. Her writing and criticism has appeared in The Daily Beast, The New Republic, Caravan Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, India, The Financial Times, and The Guardian.

Twitter: @BhopalHouse

Words Away guest: The Craft of Revising: A Masterclass on Self-editing for Writers

Growing up in the Philippines, Candy Gourlay wondered why all the books she ever loved only featured pink-skinned children who lived in snow-covered worlds that didn’t resemble her steamy, tropical home in Manila. As a result, it took her years to fulfil her dream of becoming an author – and years to learn that Filipino stories too, belong in the pages of books. Her latest novel Bone Talk was shortlisted for the Costa Prize and received glowing reviews – it is set in a historical moment in the Philippines when headhunting tribes came face to face with American invading forces for the first time. This year she published her first picture book, Is It a Mermaid, set in an idyllic white sand island typical of the Philippines, with a heartfelt eco message. Candy’s other novels for young readers, Tall Story and Shine, have been published to acclaim and listed for many prizes such as the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children’s Book Prize. Both novels won the Crystal Kite Prize for Europe. She lives in London with her family, where she wages war on the snails in her garden.

Website: candygourlay.com

Twitter: @candygourlay

Words Away Salon: Writing For Children

Growing up I thought Filipinos weren't allowed to be in books: Candy Gourlay for The Guardian

I have always worked in general trade publishing, beginning my career in the PR departments of Jonathan Cape, Picador and LittleBrown. For the past 15 years, I have been an independent publicist representing small publishers and individuals, and providing in-house support for the likes of HarperCollins, Hodder General Books, Penguin and Pan MacMillan.

Twitter: @alisonmenziespr

Words Away masterclass guest: Density and Speed: Crafting Space and Time In Writing

Antonia Hodgson is the author of the bestselling Thomas Hawkins historical crime series, and a former publisher. Her debut novel, The Devil in the Marshalsea, won the CWA Historical Dagger. She has also been shortlisted for several prestigious prizes including the Theakston’s Crime Novel of the Year, and her books have been chosen for both the Richard & Judy and Waterstones book clubs. Antonia was born and grew up in Derby and lives in London. She is on Twitter under the imaginative profile name @antoniahodgson

Website: antoniahodgson.com

Words Away Salon: Plotting, Process and Page-turners

I started as an Editorial Assistant at Little, Brown in 1994, working my way up the Editorial ladder, then launched the audiobook list as a new venture in 2003 - the imprint was called Time Warner Audiobooks and we published abridged CDs. Since then the audiobook market has flourished and Hachette Audio (as the list is now called) only publishes unabridged digital downloads and has a back catalogue of over 1800 titles. Digital audio publishing changes year-on-year and the challenges it presents and the huge market growth mean my job is very different from what it was in 2003 – however, as with all publishing, it is always underpinned by great writing and wonderful authors.

Words Away guest: Crafting Your Prose: A Masterclass on Literary Style

After a degree in English Literature, Christina Macphail started her career in publishing selling rights for Macdonald & Co. (later Little, Brown UK) - predominantly US, translation, book club, and serial. This was followed by a move into Export Sales & Marketing at Little, Brown UK, representing the Little, Brown UK and US lists in Europe, Asia, the Indian sub-continent, sub-Saharan Africa, South America and the Caribbean. A move to Universal Studios Consumer Products combined both Rights and Export Sales skills, managing film and TV tie-in publishing to Universal Studios and DreamWorks properties in international markets. Several years at IP owner/manager Chorion focused on the licensing of children’s properties, such as Noddy and Mr. Men, in the UK, in addition to managing the Enid Blyton Estate in the English language. Now International Business Development Manager at Agatha Christie Limited, Christina manages the international publishing rights to the Agatha Christie Estate, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare.

Words Away masterclass guest: Crafting Character and Setting: A Masterclass

Jenny joined Andrew Nurnberg Associates in 2002 as part time PA to the Managing Director. At that point she had no idea what a literary agent did. Sixteen years later, with a successful list of authors under her belt, many of them award-wining, she is a Director of the agency, placing books in the UK and US markets. She represents children’s and young adult fiction; also literary fiction, commercial and literary women’s fiction, psychological suspense, historical fiction, comic fiction, and narrative non-fiction. High fantasy is not her thing, though she is partial to a story with a slight, speculative thread running through it. She welcomes originality, depth, and the ability to move and surprise in submissions.

Words Away masterclass guest: The Craft of Voice

andrewnurnberg.com

Words Away salon: How Agents and Writers Work Together

Twitter: @JennySavill1

William Ryan is the author of five novels, including the Captain Korolev detective novels, set in 1930s Moscow, which have been shortlisted for numerous awards and published in 18 jurisdictions and The Constant Soldier described by the Daily Mail as “subtle, suspenseful and superb” and shortlisted for the CWA’s Steel Dagger. His latest novel, A House of Ghosts, is published in October 2018 and has been described as a cross between Nancy Mitford and Stephen King. William is currently a Teaching Fellow on the Crime Writing programme at the University of East Anglia.

Words Away Salon: There Will be Blood: Writing Violence

William’s website: www.william-ryan.com

Twitter: @WilliamRyan_

Nick Ross is production director at Little, Brown Books, which publishes a wide range of varied and successful titles. Production are the back-room, practical people who deal with all departments in-house as well as organising typesetters, printers, binders and paper mills, to help create well-produced books in time and on budget.

Words Away masterclass guest: The Craft of Plotting

littlebrown.co.uk

Jenn Ashworth was born in 1982 in Preston, where she still lives. She studied at Newnham College, Cambridge and the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester. Before becoming a writer, she worked as a librarian in a prison. Her first novel, A Kind of Intimacy, was published in 2009 and won a Betty Trask Award. On the publication of her second, Cold Light (Sceptre, 2011) she was featured on the BBC’s The Culture Show as one of the UK’s twelve best new writers. Her third novel The Friday Gospels (2013) is published by Sceptre. Ashworth has also published short fiction and won an award for her blog, Every Day I Lie a Little. Her work has been compared to both Ruth Rendell and Patricia Highsmith; all her novels to date have been set in the North West of England. She lives in Lancashire and teaches Creative Writing at Lancaster University.

Words Away Salon: Writing Ghosts

jennashworth.co.uk

Twitter: @jennashworth

Julie Cohen’s books have been translated into seventeen languages and sold nearly a million copies worldwide. Her novel DEAR THING, was a Richard and Judy Book Club pick. Her current novel, TOGETHER, is a number one Amazon bestseller and a top book club pick in Vogue, Elle, The Independent, and Australian Women’s Weekly; it won the 2018 Contemporary Romantic Novel of the Year. She has taught creative writing for The Guardian, Penguin Random House, Literature Wales and the Victoria and Albert Museum, among others, as well as running an oversubscribed literary consultancy, where she has helped many clients to publication. Julie studied English Literature at Brown University and Cambridge University and has a postgraduate degree in fairies from the University of Reading. She is Patron of literacy charity ABC To Read.

Words Away Salon: Writing Relationships: Love and Other Bruises

julie-cohen.com

Twitter: @julie_cohen

Michèle Roberts has published fourteen novels, also short stories, poetry, essays and a memoir. Her novel Daughters of the House was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the W.H.Smith Literary Award. Her most recent novel is The Walworth Beauty.

Words Away Salon: The Agony and The Ecstasy: Writing Sex In Fiction

Links: micheleroberts.co.uk

Blake Morrison was born in Skipton, Yorkshire, and was formerly literary editor of the Observer and the Independent on Sunday. His books include two bestselling memoirs, And When Did You Last See Your Father? (made into a film starring Jim Broadbent and Colin Firth) and Things My Mother Never Told Me; two libretti, written for operas by the composer Gavin Bryars; a children’s book, The Yellow House; a collection of essays and stories, Too True; the poetry collections Dark Glasses and The Ballad of the Yorkshire Ripper; and three novels, including South of the River (2007) and The Last Weekend (2010) – the latter was dramatised for television. His play adaptations for Northern Broadsides include The Cracked Poet,  Lisa’s Sex Strike, We Are Three Sisters and, most recently, For Love or Money. He is a regular contributor to the Guardian and has been professor of creative and life writing at Goldsmiths College since 2003. His latest book is a collection of poems, Shingle Street (2015). A new novel, The Executor, will be published in March 2018.

Words Away Salon: Process and Practice - Exploring Poetry and Prose

Links: blakemorrison.net

Louise Doughty is the author of eight novels, five plays for radio and one work of non-fiction.  Her seventh novel was the number one bestseller Apple Tree Yard, which has been translated into thirty languages and sold half a million copies in the UK alone.  A BBC One adaptation was shown on television last year with Emily Watson in the lead role.  Her sixth novel, Whatever You Love, was shortlisted for the Costa Prize and longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction.  Her most recent book is Black Water, which was nominated by the New York Times as one of the most notable books of 2016.

Words Away Salon: Writing Literary Thrillers and Creating Compulsive Plots

Links: louisedoughty.com 

Twitter: @DoughtyLouise

Jo has worked in publishing for nine years, having made a radical career change in her mid 40s. Starting at Conville and Walsh, she was proud to be nominated as a Rising Star in 2011, and was shortlisted as Literary Agent of the Year within only three years of coming into the industry. Two years later she was approached by Transworld and appointed as Deputy Publishing Director at Doubleday, but was very quickly able to see that her heart lay in agenting.

Jo returned to being an agent in October 2013.  She set up JULA working initially in association with RCW, and then in September ’16 opened her fully independent agency.  Based at Somerset House she now has over thirty published (or soon-to-be-published) authors. She represents authors of literary fiction, commercial women’s fiction, Young Adult fiction, children’s fiction, comic writing and narrative non-fiction: she doesn’t like to define exactly what she’s looking for, as you just don’t know what’s round the corner. In the last year alone she has had two authors longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, two longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Award, one shortlisted for the Wellcome Prize, one for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, one for the Costa First Novel, a winner of the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award as well as several Sunday Times bestsellers. 

Words Away Salon: How Writers and Agents Work Together

Links: JULA LTD

Twitter: @jounwin

Maura Dooley’s most recent collection of poetry is The Silvering (2016). Anthologies she has edited include The Honey Gatherers: Love Poems and How Novelists Work. She was Poet-in-Residence at the Jane Austen House Museum, Chawton in 2015. Her poems from the residency are published as A Quire of Paper and she also commissioned a sister-pamphlet, in which other contemporary poets respond to the work of Jane Austen All My Important Nothings In 2014 she published a pamphlet (with Elhum Shakerifa) of work by the exiled Iranian poet Azita Ghahreman, they are now working together on a full collection to be published by Bloodaxe in 2018. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and teaches at Goldsmiths.

Words Away Salon: Poetry For Prose Writers

Tessa Hadley has written six novels - including The London Train and also The Past, which won the Hawthornden Prize - and three collections of short stories. Bad Dreams and other stories was published in 2017. She publishes short stories regularly in the New Yorker, reviews for the Guardian and the London Review of Books, and is a Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University; she was awarded a Windham Campbell prize for Fiction in 2016.

Words Away Salon: Short or Long? Form in Fiction

Jill Dawson is the author of nine novels, the most recent being The Crime Writer about the author Patricia Highsmith. Others include Fred and Edie about the hanged murderess Edith Thompson, and The Great Lover, about the poet Rupert Brooke. She has won many awards and been nominated for the Orange (Baileys), Impac, Costa and Folio prizes.

She currently runs Gold Dust, a mentoring scheme which pairs established writers with those wanting to write their first book.  

Words Away Salon: Writing Fiction Using Real Characters

Links: Jill Dawson  Gold Dust

Twitter @JDawsonwriter

Monica Ali is an award-winning, bestselling writer whose novels include Brick Lane, In the Kitchen and Untold Story. She was chosen as one of Granta’s 2003 Best of Young British Novelists. Her work has been translated into 26 languages, and she has judged a number of literary prizes including as Chair of the International Man Booker. 

Her writing has appeared in numerous publications including The Guardian, the Times, The New Yorker, and the New York Times, for which she is a literary reviewer. She is a Fellow of the RSA and of the Orwell Prize. She has taught creative writing at Columbia University, New York, where she was a visiting Professor, and she is currently Distinguished Writer in Residence at the University of Surrey. 

Words Away Salon: Imagining and Developing Characters

Jacqui Lofthouse is the author of four novels including 'Bluethroat Morning' and 'The Modigliani Girl'. She is founder of The Writing Coach, a mentoring and development organisation for writers and has recently set up a small publishing imprint Nightingale Editions.

Words Away Salon: Be Your Own Writing Coach

Links: The Writing Coach  Nightingale Editons

Twitter: @WritingCoachUK

Claire Scobie is the award-winning author of Last Seen in Lhasa and The Pagoda Tree, and co-author of A Baboon in the Bedroom. She runs writing workshops, mentors writers and helps businesses harness the power of storytelling as a strategic business tool. In 2013 she completed a Doctor of Creative Arts degree at Western Sydney University.

Words Away Salon: World Building: Bringing Characters and Places Alive

Visit Claire's website here 

Twitter: @clairescobie

Facebook

Wordstruck

Francis Spufford is a recovering writer of non-fiction. His first novel Golden Hill came out in June 2016, but before that he was known for a series of eccentric hybrids of history, memoir and other things, including The Child That Books Built, Unapologetic and Red Plenty. He teaches on the writing MA at Goldsmiths College.

Words Away Salon: Exploring Creative Non-Fiction

Visit Francis' tumblr page for his recent book

Sara Grant has inspired, written or edited nearly 100 books for children. Her newest series – Chasing Danger – is an action-adventure series for teens. Sara teaches Goldsmiths University’s master class on writing for children/teens. She co-created Undiscovered Voices – which has launched the writing careers of thirty-four authors.

Words Away Salon: Writing For Children & Young Adults

Visit Sara's Website or Follow Sara on Twitter

Essie Fox’s new novel is The Last Days of Leda Grey. She is also the author of three Victorian Gothic novels ~ The Somnambulist, Elijah’s Mermaid, and The Goddess And The Thief.

Before taking up writing, Essie worked as an illustrator – designing greetings cards, gift wrap and decorative ceramics. Before that she worked in a Dickensian office in Bloomsbury’s Museum Street, employed as an editorial assistant by the publishers, George Allen & Unwin. So, in a way, it almost feels as if she has come full circle, returning to her very first love, which is the world of books.

Born and raised in Herefordshire, Essie now divides her time between Bow in East London and Windsor.

Words Away Salon: Writing Historical Fiction

View Essie's website here.  Essie also writes the popular blog The Virtual Victorian and you can follow her on Twitter

Ruth Ware is the author of the best-selling psychological crime thrillers In a Dark, Dark Wood and The Woman in Cabin 10. Before becoming a full time writer, she worked as a bookseller, a waitress, and a teacher of English as a foreign language, before moving to north London where she spent more than 14 years working as a book publicist.

Words Away Salon: Publicity For Writers; How To Get It & How To Survive It

Visit Ruth's Website or follow her on Facebook and Twitter

Stella Duffy has written fourteen novels including her latest, London Lies Beneath. The Room of Lost Things and State of Happiness were both long-listed for the Orange Prize. She has written ten plays and over fifty short stories, including several for BBC Radio 4.

Her collected stories are published by Salt in Everything is Moving, Everything is Joined. She won the CWA Short Story Dagger in 2002 (Martha Grace) and 2013 (Come Away With Me), and Stonewall Writer of the Year in 2008 (The Room of Lost Things) and 2010 (Theodora).

HBO have optioned her two Theodora novels for a TV series. She wrote and presented the BBC4 documentary How to Write a Mills and Boon and has reviewed for The Review Show (BBC2), Front Row (BBCRadio4) and written articles for most major newspapers in the UK.

She is a theatre director and performer. Her latest commission is The Matilda Effect, a play about women in science,  for Three Legged Theatre. 

In addition to her writing and theatre work, Stella is the founder and co-director of Fun Palaces, the campaign for locally-led culture at the heart of every community. In 2016 there were 292 community-led Fun Palaces across the UK with 120,000 people taking part.

Words Away Salon: Writing Short Stories

Visit Stella's website and follow her on Twitter

Elizabeth Fremantle has a BA in English and an MA in creative writing from Birkbeck, University of London. She has contributed to various publications including The Sunday Times, Vogue, Vanity Fair, The Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal. She also reviews fiction for The Sunday Express.

Words Away Salon: Creating Characters in Fiction

View Elizabeth's website and follow her on Twitter

John is a writer, perfumer and business consultant based in London.

He is the author of two novels in the dark fantasy genre published by Random House and five pseudonymous novels published by Time Warner and Headline.

At the end of 2014, John began formalising a lifelong passion for fine fragrance and founded Modernist Fragrance. An idiographic sequence of three fine fragrances, they are well regarded and reviewed by the niche fragrance community.

In his corporate financial career, he lived and worked in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific and was Managing Director of International Operations.