| Story title | Author |
Timothy J. Jarvis is a writer of supernatural fiction. He grew up in north Bedfordshire, and now lives back in Bedford. He is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Anglia Ruskin University. His 'last man' novel, The Wanderer, was first published in 2014 (Perfect Edge) and was reprinted in a new edition in 2022 (Zagava). Short-fiction has appeared in Harvard Review, Infra Noir, Bitter Distillations, An Invite to Eternity,The Far Tower: Stories for W.B. Yeats, The Shadow Booth Vol. 1, 3:AM Magazine, Leviathan 4: Cities, and New Writing 13, among other places. He is a member of the committee of the Friends of Arthur Machen, a society dedicated to the life and works of the Welsh author of the fantastic, and co-edits the Friends' journal, Faunus.
MacGillivray is the matrilineal pen and performance name of poet, musician and artist Kirsten Norrie. The author of four collections of poetry published by Bloodaxe in the UK and Red Hen in the US, she has made nine records, working with producer and musician James Young (Nico, John Cale) and her music features in the soundtracks of three films by avant-garde British director Andrew Kötting. She makes a literary appearance as a cameo in Iain Sinclair's writing and worked with cinematographer Anonymous Bosch to write and direct a Gaelic short film, returning to the Isle of Skye to shoot on location with funding from Creative Scotland. Trained at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University, she writes, performs and composes using Scots, Gaelic and English with French for her 2022 album derived from the poetry of Mary Queen of Scots, released on Antigen Records. In 2018, she raised funds to visit the great grandson of Sitting Bull to make the recording The Last Wolf of Scotland. In November 2023, Bloodaxe will publish her fourth collection based on Norwegian-Shetlandic poet Kristján Norge who vanished from Eilean a' Bhàis in 1961. She has taught at Oxford, the ECA and the Royal College of Art and directs the Oxford School of Poetry. See more on her website.
J.S.Watts is a British poet and novelist who weaves the fantastical and the literary with other vibrant strands to create glowing, multi-faceted writing. Originally from London, she now lives in Cambridgeshire.
Her poetry, short stories and non-fiction appear in a wide variety of publications in Britain, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the States and have been broadcast on BBC and Independent Radio. She has edited various magazines and anthologies and performed her poetry across England, Scotland and Wales, but not yet in Ireland (should anyone from Ireland be reading this). Along the way, she has won various awards and had honourable mentions in others, but nothing so outstanding that she wants to make a big thing out of it. .
J.S.'s three poetry collections, Cats and Other Myths, Years Ago You Coloured Me and Underword, are published by Lapwing Publications, as is her multi-award nominated SF poetry pamphlet, Songs of Steelyard Sue. Her poetry pamphlet, The Submerged Sea, was published by Dempsey & Windle. Her novels, A Darker Moon- dark fiction, Witchlight, Old Light and Elderlight - an urban fantasy trilogy, are published in the US and UK by Vagabondage Press
For further details see her website: www.jswatts.co.uk
Sarah Davies is from Merseyside via Edinburgh and London, but has lived in Bedford for over 20 years.
She has always written poetry and is a firm believer in its ability to communicate and give access to all voices.
Sarah has helped run Bedford poetry night Ouse Muse for several years.
Sarah has been published in a wide range of poetry publications, been shortlisted for poetry prizes and is working on a collection.
Paul Barnes retired from teaching secondary school English Language and Literature in Bedford in 2019. He has been a keen attender of poetry and cultural events in north Beds, and chairs Poetry Café monthly, in succession to the late Richard Hancock. The group has seen four compilation volumes edited by Paul in 2021-22. He writes occasional poetry and prose, co-runs the monthly Read Poets Society, helps in two local bookshops, and is a fanatic for cricket umpiring and Shakespeare, The Place Theatre, the Rothsay Education Centre, and the Campaign for Real Ale.
Liam Coles is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Cambridge. His project focuses on sound and religiosity in twentieth-century US poetry. He researches how poetic sound forms can interrelate with cognitive understandings of consciousness, and traces an historic lineage from pulpit to lectern heard in the voicings of American poets during performance. He secured a scholarship for his master's degree at the University of Oxford (2017-18), where he wrote mainly on nineteenth-century religious poetry, including the work of the Rossetti siblings and Keats. He has a first-class BA in English Literature from the University of Bristol (2013-16), and his undergraduate dissertation concerned the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Born and raised in Bedford, Liam now lives in London and enjoys cooking and nature, but poetry is his real joy, and outside of his academic work he loves to discover writers he has not yet heard of!
| Story title | Author | |
| All Business | James Watson | Axminster |
| Church Going | Victoria Stewart | Liverpool |
| A dying breed | Tony Durrant | Sedbergh |
| Hide | Chris Belson | Bedford |
| Home Turf | Joy Clews | Snitterby |
| Inner Loop | Josie Turner | Tonbridge |
| I Wanted to be a Blues Man | David Joseph | El Segundo, United States of America |
| Joey | Isaac Hogarth | Sydney Australia |
| A Song from a Different Room | Gwen Williams | Llanfairfechan |
| Starfish | Sheila Killian | Ballyneety, Ireland |
| Sunday Morning | Dell Kaniper | Oaxaca de Juarez Mexico |
| Thomas and Will | Felicity Reid | Coryton |
| Poem title | Poet | ||
| A RIVER RUNNING SHALLOW | Kevin Smith | Maleny, Australia | |
| Ars Poetica: 6pm | Louise Walker | London, UK | |
| Autumn Wind | Jeanette Burney | Texas, USA | |
| COLOR BLIND | Gina Shaffer | Laguan Woods, USA | |
| Counter meals | Stephanie Powell | Melbourne, Australia | Second |
| End of an Afternoon | Donald Wildman | Cary, USA | |
| Homecoming | Amy Levitin Graver | Bramford, USA | |
| Life in a Hammershøi Painting: | Lois P Jones | South Pasadena, USA | |
| Mythology | Ben Verinder | Tring, UK | |
| Ode to a Chimú Pot | Mark Fiddes | Dubbai, United Arab Emirates | Third |
| Otsuchi | Ben Verinder | Tring, UK | |
| PANTOUM (after Béla Tarr) | Ben Howard | Leeds, UK | First |
Timothy J. Jarvis is a writer of supernatural fiction. He grew up in north Bedfordshire, and now lives back in Bedford. He is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Bedfordshire. His 'last man' novel, The Wanderer, was first published in 2014 (Perfect Edge) and is coming out in a new edition in 2022 (Zagava). Short-fiction has appeared in the Harvard Review, Infra Noir, Bitter Distillations, An Invite to Eternity, The Far Tower: Stories for W.B. Yeats, The Shadow Booth Vol. 1, 3:AM Magazine, Leviathan 4: Cities, and New Writing 13, among other places. In 2012, he was shortlisted for the Lightship International Short Fiction Prize. He is also interested in drone and ambient music and has collaborated with sound artists on sleeve notes and performance. He is a member of the committee of the Friends of Arthur Machen, a society dedicated to the life and works of the Welsh author of the fantastic, and co-edits the Friends' journal, Faunus.
Jessica Mookherjee is author of two poetry collections and her second, Tigress (Nine Arches Press) was Shortlisted for best second collection in the Ledbury Munthe Prize 2021. She has been twice highly commended in the Forward Prize for best single poem (in 2018 and in 2021) and her work is included in notable anthologies such as 'Staying Human' (Bloodaxe). Her latest pamphlet is Playlists (Broken Sleep Books). Her next full collection is called &Notes from a Shipwreck& and out with Nine Arches Press in August 2022 . Her long poem Desire Lines will be published by Broken Sleep Books in 2023. She is a co-editor of Against the Grain Press and a Board Member of the Poetry Society.
Katherine Mezzacappa is Irish but now lives in Carrara, between the Apuan Alps and the Tyrrhenian Sea. She writes mainly historical fiction on the themes of love and culture clash. Writing as Katie Hutton, she is the author of >The Gypsy Bride (2020), The Gypsy's Daughter (2021) and Annie of Ainsworth's Mill (2022) published by Bonnier Zaffre. Her first novel under her own name, The Virgin of Florence, is in press with Impress Books for September 2022.
Katherine's short fiction has been published by The Copperfield Review, Ireland's Own, Erotic Review, Me First, Asymmetry, Ariel Chart, Turnpike Review, Yours and My Weekly and in anthologies. She also writes romance under the pseudonym Kate Zarrelli (eXtasy Books). Her stories have been shortlisted in competitions by The Writers and Artists Yearbook and The Fiction Desk, and longlisted for the 2018 Colm Tóibín Short Story Award and in 2019 for the Dorothy Dunnett prize. She has also published academically in the field of 19th century ephemeral illustrated fiction, and in management theory.
Whilst Katherine currently earns a living in management consultancy, which pays the bills but doesn't nourish the soul, she has in the past been a museum curator, library assistant, lecturer in History of Art, sewing machinist and geriatric care assistant. In her spare time she volunteers with a second-hand book charity of which she is a founder member. She has two teenage sons and a husband who fortunately enjoys cooking.
Katherine is a member of the Irish Writers Centre, Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann, the Irish Writers Union, the Society of Authors, the Historical Writers' Association, the Historical Novel Society and the Romantic Novelists Association, and reviews for Historical Novel Review. She is a manuscript assessor for The Literary Consultancy. She has a Masters in Creative Writing from Canterbury Christ Church University, and is represented by Annette Green Authors' Agency.
Cameron Stuart is a poet originally from, and now back residing in, Bedford. He attended the Poetry MFA at Saint Mary's College of California, and has taught writing at SMC and Berkeley. He is the recipient of Judith Butler and Community of Writers scholarships.
Guy Russell was born in Chatham, UK, and has been a holiday courier, purchasing clerk, media analyst and fan-heater production operative. He currently works in Milton Keynes for the Open University. Work in No Spider Harmed (Arachne Press), Somewhere This Way (Fiction Desk), Brace (Comma Press), To Hull And Back 2018, Madame Morte (Black Shuck), Northern Stories vol. 3 (Arc), Troubles Swapped For Something Fresh (Salt), The Iron Book of New Humorous Verse (Iron), Liars League, The Rialto, The Interpreter's House and elsewhere. Competition first prizes: HE Bates Award; Leicester Poetry Society; Ware Sonnet Prize; Cannon Sonnet or Not; Flash500. He occasionally reviews for Tears in the Fence and its blog.
Liam Coles is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Cambridge. His project focuses on sound and religiosity in twentieth-century US poetry. He researches how poetic sound forms can interrelate with cognitive understandings of consciousness, and traces an historic lineage from pulpit to lectern heard in the voicings of American poets during performance. He secured a scholarship for his master's degree at the University of Oxford (2017-18), where he wrote mainly on nineteenth-century religious poetry, including the work of the Rossetti siblings and Keats. He has a first-class BA in English Literature from the University of Bristol (2013-16), and his undergraduate dissertation concerned the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Born and raised in Bedford, Liam now lives in London and enjoys cooking and nature, but poetry is his real joy, and outside of his academic work he loves to discover writers he has not yet heard of!
| Story title | Author |
| Fish Knife | Juna Bine - New York, NY, USA |
| One Shot | David Butler - Bray Ireland |
| Most Likely | Claire Gleeson - Dublin, Ireland |
| At the Stepwell | Anita Goodfellow - Marlow, England |
| The Oboe Player | Juliet Hill - Madrid, Spain |
| Six Foot Track | David Shelley Jones - Sydney, NSW, Australia |
| Pietersen in the Black Country | Andrew Kingston - Luton, England |
| Sacred Arrow | Judy Koot - Utrecht, Netherlands |
| Stargazing | John Langan - Caterham, England |
| Bog Summer | JeanAnn Pollard - Winslow, Maine, USA |
| Chattels | Diana Powell - Haverford West, Wales |
| I Can't Hear You | Matt Thomas - Manchester, England |
| Poem title | Poet |
| from the dark side | Linda Burnett - Mansfield, England |
| Emptying your wardrobes | Lucy Crispin - Wray, England |
| My mothers watch | Norman Goodwin - Seattle, WA, USA |
| Sweet Briar Plantation Burial Ground | Matt Hohner - Baltimore, MO, USA |
| The Ancestors Get Questions About Your DNA Test Results | G.R. Kramer - Alexandria, VA, USA |
| Sous Les Etoiles | Harry Lowery - Gateshead, England |
| When I was Anna Pavlova | Mary Mulholland - London, England |
| The bees | Damen O'Brien - Wynnum, QLD, Australia |
| On a Cold Day in New Orleans | Griff Plaag - New Orleans, LA, USA |
| The Daughter You Almost Had | Ricky Ray - Danbury, CT, USA |
| When your Jamaican Grandmother Sings to You | Laura Ross - Mount Dora, FL, USA |
| Seducing Tom Jones at the Travelodge in Slough | Di Slaney - Bilsthorpe,, England |
Patrick McGuinness is a poet and novelist, and Professor of French at the University of Oxford. His first novel, The Last Hundred Days (2011), was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, the Writers Club First Novel Award, and winner of the Writers Guild Award for Fiction and the Wales Book of the Year. In French, it was shortlisted for both the Prix Meedicis étranger and the Priz Fémina étranger, and won the Prix de la librairie Millepages and the Premier Roman étranger.
Anne Berkeley's poems have been published widely and have won prizes in many competitions including the Times Literary Supplement, Arvon, Kent & Sussex. Her first collection The Men from Praga (Salt) was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre prize. She has performed round England and Wales and in New York with the poetry ensemble The Joy of Six. She edited Rebecca Elson's acclaimed posthumous collection A Responsibility to Awe, now re-issued as a Carcanet Classic.
>
Guy Russell was born in Chatham, UK, and has been a holiday courier, purchasing clerk, media analyst and fan-heater production operative. He currently works in Milton Keynes for the Open University. Work in No Spider Harmed (Arachne Press), Somewhere This Way (Fiction Desk), Brace (Comma Press), To Hull And Back 2018, Madame Morte (Black Shuck), Northern Stories vol. 3 (Arc), Troubles Swapped For Something Fresh (Salt), The Iron Book of New Humorous Verse (Iron), Liars League, The Rialto, The Interpreter's House and elsewhere. Competition first prizes: HE Bates Award; Leicester Poetry Society; Ware Sonnet Prize; Cannon Sonnet or Not; Flash500. He occasionally reviews for Tears in the Fence and its blog.
Katherine Mezzacappa is Irish but now lives in Carrara, between the Apuan Alps and the Tyrrhenian Sea. She writes mainly historical fiction on the themes of love and culture clash. Writing as Katie Hutton, she is the author of The Gypsy Bride (2020) and The Gypsy's Daughter (2021), published by Bonnier Zaffre. Her first novel under her own name, Giulia of the Albizzi, is in press with Impress Books.
Katherine's short fiction has been published by The Copperfield Review, Ireland's Own, Erotic Review, Me First, Asymmetry, Ariel Chart, Turnpike Review, Yours and My Weekly and in anthologies. She also writes romance under the pseudonym Kate Zarrelli (eXtasy Books). Her stories have been shortlisted in competitions by The Writers and Artists Yearbook and The Fiction Desk, and longlisted for the 2018 Colm Tóibín Short Story Award and in 2019 for the Dorothy Dunnett prize. She has also published academically in the field of 19th century ephemeral illustrated fiction, and in management theory.
Whilst Katherine currently earns a living in management consultancy, which pays the bills but doesn't nourish the soul, she has in the past been a museum curator, library assistant, lecturer in History of Art, sewing machinist and geriatric care assistant. In her spare time she volunteers with a second-hand book charity of which she is a founder member. She has two teenage sons and a husband who fortunately enjoys cooking.
Katherine is a member of the Irish Writers Centre, Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann, the Irish Writers Union, the Society of Authors, the Historical Writers' Association, the Historical Novel Society and the Romantic Novelists Association, and reviews for Historical Novel Review. She is a manuscript assessor for The Literary Consultancy. She has a Masters in Creative Writing from Canterbury Christ Church University, and is represented by Annette Green Authors' Agency.
Cameron Stuart is a poet originally from, and now back residing in, Bedford. He attended the Poetry MFA at Saint Mary's College of California, and has taught writing at SMC and Berkeley. He is the recipient of Judith Butler and Community of Writers scholarships.
| Story title | Author |
| The End of Love-Longing | Serena Alagappan - Oxford |
| Lightning Girl | Elen Lee Lewis - Twickenham |
| Passepartout | Gem Newman - Winnipeg, Canada |
| The Heehaw Dog | Gill Heriz - Palgrave |
| The Rains | Gavin O'Toole - Carshalton |
| The Fifty-Nine Second Watch | Alastair Chisholm - Edinburgh |
| Clara | Chris Humphrey - Selsey |
| Go, Judy, Go!, Judy, Go! | David Shelley Jones - Sydney, Australia |
| A Gradual Thing | Diana Powell - Haverfordwest |
| Released | Bruce Harris - Seaton |
| The Rescue Dog | David Butler - Bray, Ireland |
| Whispers in Colour | Michael Ranes - Maidenhead, Berks |
| Poem title | Poet |
| Biding our time | Susan Gully - Lisburn, Belfast |
| The Biologist | Jennifer Harrison - Windsor, VIC Australia |
| Egg | Michaela Coplen - Finsbury Park, London |
| Examination | Anne Casey - Northberidge, NSW Austrakia |
| Halloween | Vanessa Lampert - Wallingford, Oxfordshire |
| Hitchhiker | Nicholas Hogg - Leicester, Leics |
| In Memory of my father: Upholsterer | Philip Dunn - Nannerch, Flintshire |
| Motherland | Jenny Mitchell - Brixton Hill, London |
| Penelope's Perspective: Cutting Up the Bed to Offer Him Olive Branches | Freya Bantiff - Ecclesall, Sheffield |
| Snow Day | Marie-Louise Eyres - Bethesda, Maryland |
| Soar | Jim Green - Norwich, Norfolk |
| View | Michaela Coplen - Finsbury Park, London |
Second Prize
Penelope's Perspective: Cutting Up the Bed to Offer Him Olive Branches
by
Freya Bantiff
After graduating with an MA in Literature, Jordan joined The Blair Partnership, literary agents for many renowned authors including J.K. Rowling, in 2016 and was made an Associate Agent in 2020. His reading tastes are wide-ranging and as an agent predominantly represents literary fiction, reading group fiction and crime and thrillers, as well as some non-fiction.
Lesley Saunders is the author of several books of poetry, most recently Nominy-Dominy (Two Rivers Press 2018) - 'a feature of this collection is its sheer ease with and celebration of language itself' (Martin Malone, The Interpreter's House). Lesley was joint winner of the inaugural Manchester Poetry Prize and one of the winners of the 2017 Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition. In 2016, Lesley won the Stephen Spender Prize for poetry in translation with her English version of a poem by the acclaimed Portuguese poet Maria Teresa Horta; Lesley's latest book, Point of Honour (Two Rivers Press 2019), pays homage to the radical and erotic work of Horta - who celebrated her 82nd birthday in May 2019 - with nearly 100 translated poems. Lesley leads writing workshops and undertakes poetry mentoring; she has performed her work at festivals and on the radio, and worked on collaborative projects and productions with visual artists, musicians, composers and dancers as well as other poets - most recently with Philip Gross in A Part of the Main (Mulfran Press 2018)
In the Nineties Neil won the Sussex Playwrights Award and The Richard Burton Poetry Competition, going on later to take an MA in Creative Writing specialising in Poetry and Novel writing. Two plays Pristine in Blue and A View Of Glass Mountains were professionally performed recently and in 2017 his novel Lemon Seas was published. Neil's poems have appeared in The Cannon's Mouth, Erbacce, Dreamcatcher, The French Literary Review and many other magazines. Having had poetry published in Orbis, he has recently had a short story, Key Notes published in the magazine.
Steve Kendall is a graduate of the Newcastle University / Poetry School MA in Writing Poetry. He is a co-host of the Bedford reading series 'Ouse Muse' and convenor of the North Beds and Milton Keynes Stanza. His work has most recently appeared in Strix and Magma.
Stephen Bywater joined the merchant navy at sixteen before going on to study English at university. After graduating he taught in South and Central America for three years, returning to the UK to complete an MLitt at St Andrews. For the past twenty years he has taught English in Bedford, where he lives with his wife and two daughters. He is the author of two novels, The Devil's Ark and Night of the Damned (published by Headline/Hachette), and is currently working on his third.
Cameron Stuart is a poet originally from, and now back residing in, Bedford. He attended the Poetry MFA at Saint Mary's College of California, and has taught writing at SMC and Berkeley. He is the recipient of Judith Butler and Community of Writers scholarships.
Leigh Russell is the author of twenty-one crime novels, including the Geraldine Steel series which has sold over a million books. Shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger Award, long listed for the CWA Dagger in the Library, she is Chair of the CWA Debut Dagger Judges and Co-ordinator for the CWA Critiques. She was a Finalist for the People's Book Prize, and is a Royal Literary Fellow. Find out more about Leigh from her website.
| Story title | Author |
| Mangata | Christopher Baker - Oxford |
| Mongrel | Robert Carter - STOCKTON NSW, Australia |
| Selfish Kisses and Early Polaroids | James Woolf - London |
| Beacons | sophie holland - Bristol |
| Her Unused Smile | Sarah Dawson - Tunbridge Wells |
| Silver Bird | David Shelley Jones - SYDNEY, Australia |
| White Angel | Paul Chiswick - Birmingham |
| The Life and Times of Sam the Wanderer as the End of Days Approaches | Anya Christiansen - Auckland, New Zealand |
| Onassis and Hoxha | Juliet Hill - Madrid, Spain |
| Traces | Amanda Hildebrandt - Caulfield North VIC, Australia |
| Tell us a bit about yourself | David Shelley Jones - SYDNEY, Australia |
| Broken Blood | Pauline (HUGHES) PLUMMER - North Shields |
| Poem title | Poet |
| Clarifying the protection of birds legislation | Vanessa Lampert - Wallingford |
| Jenny Wren | Ben Verinder - Tring |
| Lost Girls | Federica Peru - Frosinone-FR, Italy |
| Calling my mother | Anne Casey - Northbridge, Australia |
| The Promised Land | Maia Béar - London |
| if I had a lodger I could explain | Tamsin Hopkins - London |
| Toy Mouse, Discovered at Vindolanda Roman Fort, May 2020 | Isabella Mead - Wendover |
| Hymn | Harriet Sanders - Christchurch 8011, New Zealand |
| Manarola - final night - no camera | Han Smith - Bromley |
| Every Black History Month | Wura Arisekola - Portarlington, Ireland |
| Passing and meeting | Molly Underwood - London |
| A Short Film About Love | Joseph Kidney - Palo Alto, United States of America |
Third Prize
The Life and Times of Sam the Wanderer as the End of Days Approaches
by
Anya Christiansen
First Prize
Memories from Muskwa Creek
by
Shirlee Matheson
Second Prize
A Different Version
by
Janet Newman
Third Prize
Starlings
by
Norma Allen
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