William is an entrepreneur, philanthropist writer and broadcaster with a distinguished record of support for the arts and literature. In 1992, he founded the Forward Prizes for Poetry and in 1994, National Poetry Day. Since September 2015, he has been chairman of the Board of Trustees at Somerset House. He is the founder and Chairman of…

Helen Stockton has been working with adult groups since 2000 when she first started working in Further Education. She includes writing for wellbeing as part of her general creative writing offer and has facilitated courses for the wider public and in mental health settings including her local hospice. She is also a writing mentor, helping writers…

After completing her degree at Goldsmiths, Laura Steen taught English in a secondary school in Madrid for two years. She piloted an e-learning scheme called ‘Global Scholars’ which empowered students to create their own digital projects, raising awareness of global issues such as food security and climate change. After completing the Introduction to Therapeutic and…

Sam Blake is a pseudonym for Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin, the founder of The Inkwell Group publishing consultancy and the hugely popular national writing resources website Writing.ie. She is Ireland’s leading literary scout who has assisted many award winning and bestselling authors to publication. Vanessa has been writing fiction since her husband set sail across the Atlantic for eight weeks and she…

Asia grew up in London and studied Anthropology at Durham University, after which she started a career in television. She presented and produced lifestyle programmes in Shanghai before moving back to London, where she worked for Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman as Project Manager on their round-the-world motorbike documentaries. She started writing Killing It on maternity leave and…

Born in 1959 in Somerset, Ashley Pharoah is an award-winning writer and series creator. His credits include Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes and The Living and the Dead.

Irenosen Okojie was born in Nigeria and moved to England aged eight. She attended Gresham’s Boarding School in Holt, Norfolk, for several years before becoming a pupil at St Angela’s Convent School in east London. Along the way, she has worked as a freelance writer, Marketing Assistant and Editorial Assistant. She is a currently a freelance…

Originally trained as a teacher in Philosophy, from 1977 until 1988 Stella worked in Kenya where she established a teacher training scheme for the Aga Khan Educational Fund, Geneva. In 1988 she relocated to Denmark.  Stella gave up full-time technical writing and editing almost 4 years ago to concentrate on her creative writing. She worked through the Norwich Writing…

Charlotte is a writer and editor from Chipping Norton, and joined the Committee as ChipLitFest Programme Director having volunteered at the 2016 Festival. Having taught English in South-East Asia and devised curricula for language schools, Charlotte is an active advocate for creative arts and education, acting as content writer for Field Notes and on other digital platforms.…