Julia Golding

Oxford-based, Julia Golding is a multi-award-winning author of over sixty novels in genres from fantasy to historical for adults, YA and children. She also writes under the pen names Joss Stirling and Eve Edwards. Julia is a passionate enthusiast for Tolkien’s writings and the inspirational possibilities of the city where he spent most of his life.

Having had a varied career as a British diplomat and policy adviser for the NGO Oxfam, she also has a doctorate in English Literature from Oxford University. She is currently working on three screenwriting projects as well as a crime series for adults and a series for younger readers about Jane Austen.

You can also find her on her podcast ‘What would Jane do?’ which takes an eighteenth century perspective on modern life.

Rowena Roberts

Rowena is a creativity coach at Words Inspire. As a young teenager, she assigned Tolkien characters to her friends in order to help both her and them understand aspects of their personality and see where they were on their individual "hero's journey". True story!

She went on to work as a copywriter for 18 years, before deciding to switch from lending people her voice, to helping them discover their own. She now works as a creativity coach, helping writers to use both their imagination and intuition in order to find their authentic creative flow.

Rowena is based in Greater Manchester in England. As well as one-to-one creativity coaching, she runs online courses and a writers' circle, and she is currently writing her first non-fiction book.

Vanessa Harbour

Vanessa has been a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Winchester for over fifteen years. She lectures at undergraduate and post-graduate levels. Her creative writing PhD looked at the representation/representing of sex, drugs and alcohol in British contemporary realist young adult fiction. Vanessa has also supported aspiring writers through the Golden Egg Academy as an editor and workshop leader. Flight her debut novel was published in 2018 by Firefly and in 2021 by Feiwell and Friends in the US. Its sequel Safe comes out in September 2022. Currently, she is writing a historical novel for adults. She loves using texts such as Alice in Wonderland in a children's literature module she taught and more recently, Pullman's Nothern Lights in various modules.

Claire O’Brien

Claire has taught children and adults in the UK, USA and Colombia. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University where her tutors included the poet Paul Farley and feminist fairy tale author Sara Maitland. She designed and taught a short course, Writing for Children, at the university before moving to the south of England. An active member of SCBWI, Claire runs online critique groups, competitions and retreats. Her debut novel, Cordelia Codd, was Sunday Times Children's Book of the Week on publication. She has also been shortlisted for the Times Educational Supplement Primary English Award and her first adult historical fiction, Glittering Captives, was longlisted for the Historical Writers Association Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Award in 2019.

Claire is currently working on a middle grade fantasy novel, an historical novel for adults set at Versailles in the 17th Century, and on retelling the fairy stories of Madame d'Aulnoy. Her published titles include The Terrifying Teacher (Franklin Watts), Absolutely Awful Adults, A Job for George and Milo, and reworkings of Pinocchio and Wind in the Willows (Oxford University Press). In non fiction, she is the author of Buddhism and the Menopause (Mudpie books).

M G Harris

Born in Mexico City, Lupita grew up in Manchester, England. Before turning to writing fiction she was a molecular biologist and also had a stint as an Internet entrepreneur. Lupita (short for Maria Guadalupe aka 'MG’) has published three book series for young readers. "The Joshua Files" and 'Gemini Force One' (authored as M.G. Harris) are sci-fi fantasy adventures for middle-grade; 'Emancipated' trilogy (author M.G. Reyes) is a young adult crime drama.

She is currently developing a TV series based on "The Joshua Files."

Kath Langrish

Katherine writes children’s fiction and adult non-fiction. West of the Moon is an abridged version of her trilogy, Troll Fell, Troll Mill and Troll Blood which attracted great reviews. Her historical fantasy novel Dark Angels (Shadow Hunt in the US) won a Kirkus starred review: ‘this spooky yet utterly grounded story features pitch perfect prose, suspense and redemption’ and was a Junior Library Group Selection (2010). Her short stories have appeared in several collections. Katherine is the creator of the blog Seven Miles of Steel Thistles– https://steelthistles.blogspot.com – dedicated to fairy tales, folklore and fantasy, and she has published a book of essays of the same name, praised by Professor Jacqueline Simpson in Folklore as ‘elegant, vivid, and witty’. She contributed to First Light, essays for Alan Garner’s 80th birthday compiled by Erica Wagner. Her latest book From Spare Oom to War Drobe: Travels in Narnia with my nine year-old self (April 2021) has been praised by Neil Gaiman: ‘Katherine Langrish … takes us around a place we thought we knew and makes it finer and more interesting than it was before.'

Claire Fayer

Claire is an award-winning author of middle grade fantasy. Her books include The Accidental Pirates duology (Macmillan/Henry Holt), and her best-selling Welsh Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends (Scholastic), which was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and the Tir na n-Og award for children's fiction in the UK. She has a keen interest in the oral storytelling tradition and her books draw on myths and legends from around the world. She is an active member of the SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators), running a monthly critique group for aspiring authors, and she has worked as a tutor and mentor with Write Mentor. She is currently editing her next book, a fantastical mash-up of Greek myth and popular sci-fi, to be published by Firefly Press in 2023.

Lucy Strange

Bestselling fantasy author Lucy Strange lives in England, in the heart of the Kent Downs. Her novels for children include The Secret of Nightingale Wood (2016; Waterstones Book of the Month) and Our Castle by the Sea (2019; Independent Booksellers’ Book of the Month, nominated for the Carnegie Medal, and shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize 2020). Lucy’s latest novel The Ghost of Gosswater is a gothic mystery set in the Lake District at the turn of the century. Her writing characteristically combines elements of fantasy and magical realism with historical settings.

After studying English Literature at Sheffield University, Lucy trained at the Oxford School of Drama. She went on to work as an actor, singer and storyteller for several years before training as a secondary school English teacher. She has taught creative writing as a guest lecturer at several UK schools and universities, and as part of the Bath Festival. 

Lucy narrates the audiobook versions of her novels for both the UK and the US, winning the 2019 Audie Award in New York, and shortlisted for their 2020 Middle Grade Award.