Melanie Whipman is an Associate Lecturer and PhD student. Her stories have been broadcast on Radio 4 and published in numerous magazines and anthologies. Her MA in Creative Writing was awarded the Kate Betts Prize.  She has lived in Germany, France and Israel, and has had a variety of careers including selling hair transplants, cleaning water slides, and working on a crocodile farm. She is now settled in a Surrey village with her teenage twins, dog, cats and chickens. She doesn’t have room for a llama just yet. Her first collection, Llama Sutra is scheduled for publication soon.

Joanna was born in 1960 and grew up in Hayes, Middlesex. A shy child with appalling eyesight, her father spent every weekend soldering the wire arms of her NHS glasses back together. At the age of three, she taught herself to read when an insightful nursery-school teacher left her alone in the classroom with a stack of books. Preferring to stay on the sidelines, she has always watched people and invented stories about them. Joanna's love of words led her to become a writer of prizewinning stories, which have been published in numerous magazines such as Writers' Forum and Woman's Weekly, as well as competition anthologies. On more than one occasion she has been shortlisted for both the prestigious Bristol, Fish and Bridport Story Prizes. Her novel, Tying Down The Lion, about an English family driving to Berlin during the Cold War, was published in 2015, and her short story collection When Planets Slip Their Tracks is due out later in 2015.

Multi-award winning writer Lynne Voyce is a native of Liverpool who now lives in England’s industrial heartland.  She writes in order to live many lives and see many things.  Her short fiction has been published widely in books, magazines and online.  When she’s not writing she teaches English at an inner city comprehensive and tries her best to enthuse others about literature.  She is married with two daughters.  She would like to be fluent in French, cook fantastic vegetarian food and complete Wainwright’s Coast to Coast Walk, but right now she doesn’t have the time. Her collection Kirigami was published in 2014.

Mark was born in Whitstable in 1966 and has lived in London since the 1980s. A transient decade of short-term lets and long-term parties took a bite out of him and while in recovery he started to work through the questions and fears that were to frame his first two novels. Mark’s first published story Up West appeared in Writers’ Forum in 1999.  Although a very brief piece, it marked the beginning of his emergence as a distinctive London writer. Catching time at the kitchen table while his young children were asleep, Mark developed his first collection Blue Sunday Stories and through the early years of the century steadily grasped towards the individual style which makes his work recognisably compelling. In 2010 Allotments became his first story published in the United States. Mark has won several UK and US awards. In 2012 he won the Machigonne Fiction Contest with title story from his collection Burn Lines.

Bonnie West's stories and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including The Minetta Review - A literary magazine of New York University, The Talking Stick, Women's Day, Redbook Magazine, The Austin Chronicle, and two anthologies, Still Going Strong and The Ultimate Dog Lover. She has four mini-mysteries for children published by Carol Rhoda Press and a bilingual Japanese/English book, Hideki and Kenji Save the Day published in collaboration with Diane Carter. She was a finalist in both the Essay and Novel-in-progress categories of The William Faulkner - William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition. She lives with her husband in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Her debut collection of short stories, Boyfriends will be published late in 2015.

Hannah was born in Yorkshire but spent her teenage years growing up in Nepal and India. A degree in English and Publishing led to a career in charity fundraising. A cancer diagnosis, long distance romance and a relocation to Canada all served as distractions from her childhood ambition to be a published writer. Now firmly settled in the Cotswolds with her husband, two children and dogs, Hannah has firmly placed writing amongst her top priorities. Two and a half years ago the only creative writing Hannah had attempted was some rather tormented poetry, but her determination has reaped rewards. In July 2015 Hannah completed the Faber Writing a Novel course, and she is currently writing her second novel whilst the first gets a rest in a drawer.

A librarian by profession, John Holland spent much of the 1980s writing comedy for BBC Radio 4’s Weekending and Radio 2’s The News Huddlines, as well as for TV shows he is happy he can no longer recall. He also wrote for Punch magazine, which folded while he was working for it - a fact that many believe is not a coincidence.

Mandy has won numerous writing competitions and been placed and shortlisted in many others, including those run by Fish, InkTears, English Pen, The Telegraph, Bare Fiction, Reader’s Digest, and Bradt Travel Guides/Independent on Sunday. She won the British Guild of Travel Writers New Travel Writer Award 2014, and was runner-up in the 2016 Dragonfly Tea/Henley Literature Festival Short Story Competition. A selection of her short stories will be showcased in a forthcoming InkTears anthology.

Anne Summerfield was brought up in one of the most boring towns in England, which may explain why she’s always written stories. Last century she had short stories published in Virago and Serpent’s Tail anthologies, in Mslexia magazine and on Radio 4. More recently she won the Exeter Writers Short Story competition, was shortlisted for the first Exeter Novel Prize, has had flash fiction included in several National Flash Fiction Day FlashFloods, and stories in Shooter magazine and the Refugees Welcome Anthology.

Stephanie Lyttle won’t be happy until she knows everything. She likes bad TV, fine art, yellow flowers, and stories set in places she can’t afford a holiday to. She would probably be able to afford more holidays if she didn’t have an unfortunate tendency to buy second copies of books she loves “just in case”. She’s mostly new to writing competitions, but she has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize for flash fiction.

Caroline Gilfillan grew up near Brighton and spent most of her childhood turning over stones in rock pools. She lived in London for a long time, forming Stepney Sisters, a feminist rock band, with fellow female friends after becoming eager to move beyond banging the tambourine and singing crunchy backing vocals. At the same time she published her first short stories and poetry and joined an intense, mouthy writing group. Just before the millennium she signed up for an MA in Creative Writing at Lancaster University. Leaving London gave her more time to write and she never returned to the big smoke. She’s published four collections of poetry, most recently Poet In Boots (Brewster Press, 2015), a love letter to North Norfolk. Obsessed by history, her first full collection, Pepys (2012), explored the life of the irrepressible London diarist. Her short fiction has been published in The London Magazine, Mslexia and elsewhere, and she’s won and been placed in short story competitions. She’s also written novels she hopes will soon be published – but that’s another story. She now lives in the Lake District, where she scrambles on to the roof of the world inventing characters and poems as she climbs. 

Gina Challen is originally from London, and moved to West Sussex in 1979. Whilst working as an Insurance Broker, she began a BA (Hons) in English and Creative Writing at the University of Chichester. In 2012, she left her job to complete a Masters Degree in Creative Writing. This she fondly calls her mid-life crisis. Her short stories have been shortlisted for many awards including The Bristol Short Story Prize, The Bridport Prize, Ink Tears Short Story Award, Storgy Short Story Award, Cinnamon Press Short Story Award and the Willesden Herald Short Story Award.

Claire Adam grew up in Port of Spain, Trinidad – with regular visits to Ireland, where her mother's family is from. She did her undergraduate degree in Physics at Brown University in the U.S. and then spent a few years in Italy and Ireland before settling down in London. She did an MA in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London, and was shortlisted for the 2012 Pat Kavanagh Award for an extract for her novel-in-progress. Since then, she's mainly been working on completing that novel, but she's also had a little bit of success with a few short stories. She won a place on the London Word Factory 2016 “Apprenticeship” scheme, and is now working, with mentor Jacob Ross, on developing a short story collection.

James Mulhern has published fiction in several literary journals, with more stories to be published this year and next. One of his stories appeared in The Library's Best, a collection of best short stories. In September of 2013, he was chosen as a finalist for the Tuscany Prize in Catholic Fiction. 
James was granted a writing fellowship to study in the United Kingdom during the summer of 2015, where he participated in seminars at Oxford University's Exeter College. He has been awarded several prizes for his writing, including, more recently, two short story Honorable Mentions for the Short Story America Prize in September of 2015. 

Eleven short stories/adaptations from his novel Molly Bonamici (February 2016), a psychological thriller set in Boston and South Florida, have been accepted for publication. In 2016 and 2017, additional stories will be published in an anthology, as well as in literary magazines. This summer, James will begin a follow-up novel to Molly Bonamici, which will be set in Ireland.

He lives and works in the Fort Lauderdale area of Florida (just north of Miami) as both a high school teacher and a college professor.

I was born in 1987 in Stevenage, Hertfordshire where I still live now with my partner Leon and our three beautiful children Ollie, Scarlett and Maia. I grew up as the youngest of five kids in a family of creative and emotional people, surrounded by music, art and words. Stories and poetry were forever being written, spoken or sung by our parents and writing and creativity became important to me from a young age. I became a mother at age seventeen and spent some years as a single parent working as a waitress and studying an access course which enabled me to get into university. I studied Writing and English literature and graduated in 2014. I took some time out to spend with my family but plan to begin teacher training this September.  I write mostly short fiction and children’s stories and poetry. 

Adena Graham's short stories have appeared in numerous publications, both online and offline - including Creepy Pasta, Unhinged, Dead Things, QWF, Writers' Brew and, most recently, three editions of Popshot Magazine. She has twice been placed as runner-up in the Faber Academy Quickfic competition. Her short story, Parrotlytic, won third prize in the To Hull & Back humorous short story competition, her short story More Than Life was Highly Commended in the Writers' Village International Short Fiction Award Winter 2015, and her short story Comedy of Terrors won the Hour of Writes competition in February. She was also shortlisted for the Ink Tears Flash Fiction Prize 2015. As well as short stories, Adena's had two erotic novels published under a pseudonym (so her mum won't find out!) She has also completed two fiction novel and is partway through a third, which she hopes to find an agent for.

Pauline Suett Barbieri is a Liverpool writer with a love of poetry. She has two collections of poetry out from Waterloo Press, Hove, 'The Shirley Valentine Syndrome' and 'Bringing Home the Bacon'.

She was shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize to number 12 out of 4500 submissions judged by Sir Andrew Motion. She was also shortlisted for the Exeter Poetry Prize twice, judged by Jo Shapcott and Lawrence Sail, respectively. In addition, she was Highly Commended in the Blackwell's Oxford/The Reader Poetry competition. 

Matt Barnard is a poet and short story writer. He has had poems published in a range of magazines, including Acumen, London Magazine, Magma, Other Poetry and Outposts. He was featured in the Poetry School’s 2004 anthology Entering the Tapestry and in 2006 won The Poetry Society’s Hamish Canham Prize with his poem ‘The Sore Thumb’. In 2014 he was included in short story anthology Momaya Annual Review, and in 2015, he won the Ink Tears short story competition with ‘The Last Damn Peach’. In the same year, his poem ‘Eel‘was highly commended in the Bridport Prize. He was born in 1972 in London, where he still lives with his wife and their two sons and two dogs and works as a social researcher for the Anna Freud Centre

Glenn lives in Devon with his soulmate, Helen, and their wagging dog, Peggy. Some of his short stories were published in magazines after he finished his literature degree, but he hasn’t written fiction in more than a decade – unless you count his news journalism. He’s promised Helen that he won’t leave it another decade before the next short story.

Marina Marinopoulos loves stories. Reading them, hearing them and, of course, writing them. She has always written, in both Greek and English, but up to now life always got in the way of attempting publication. After years of procrastinating, she decided it was time to share her writing with others. Rejections piled up, but her story Heatwave was published in the Aestas anthology, others have been shortlisted in competitions and more are still awaiting replies. She has also completed a mystery novel, which she is in the process of editing. Marina is both awed and cowed by the stupendous achievements of the other writers on the InkTears site and fears she has a lot of catching up to do. But that’s the fun of it, after all. She’s a terrible bookworm and, when not writing, can be found painting, cooking, riding or just out with her dogs. Or buying yet more books.

Maxine Patterson lives in Sedgefield, Co. Durham with her husband. She’s a retired deputy Headteacher who taught English at secondary level. She only started writing after retirement and is heavily involved in a University of the Third Age writing group in Sedgefield and has published several stories on the local U3A website. The Ticket was her first short story submitted for a competition.

Naomi confesses that the best word to describe her is: whimsical. Forget about “the girl next door” and think along the lines of “the girl from the next galaxy over” and you’d be closer to the correct personality trope. She is an unequivocal day-dreamer, anime enthusiast, partisan of fantastical things, and unshakable devotee to story-telling. Her love for absorbing fabulous, unforgettable stories is only outshined by her love for creating her own. When not writing or wandering around inside her head, Naomi takes to drawing, singing, reading (of course), playing console games, working with rescued animals, and dabbling in the occasional art commission. At present, she shares a house with her equally peculiar sister, rambunctious nephews, flamboyant niece, fun-loving cats, Kyo and Yuki, and wonderfully tolerant housemate, on the Gold Coast, Australia.

Alison Wassell is a short story writer with no intention whatsoever of ever writing a novel. She is a former primary school teacher who now makes a living by selling bottled gas in her cousins' business whilst volunteering in a charity shop and attempting to become a proper writer. She has had stories published in various magazines and anthologies, and has been longlisted, shortlisted and placed in a numerous competitions.

Natalia Theodoridou holds a PhD in Media & Cultural Studies from SOAS, University of London. She is the dramaturge of Adrift Performance Makers (@AdriftPM), and a writer of strange stories. Her work has been published in KROnline, Ninth Letter, Interfictions, Clarkesworld, and Neon, among other venues. It has also been translated into Greek, French, Italian, and Portuguese. Originally from Greece, Natalia has lived in the US, the UK, and Indonesia for several years. She is currently based in Exeter, UK. You can find out more at her website, www.natalia-theodoridou.com, or by following @natalia_theodor on Twitter. 

Tric Kearney is a writer living in Cork, Ireland. She grew up among a large family, where competition to tell the most compelling or entertaining story at the dinner table was fierce. Emerging from the mists of being a stay at home mother to four children, she has finally found her writing voice. Tric was named, Best Writer at the Irish Parenting Blog Awards. Her blog, My Thoughts On A Page was voted Best Personal Blog at the same event. She writes a weekly humorous column in The Irish Examiner newspaper. She particularly enjoys writing short stories and flash fiction. Her story Goodnight Jimmy featured in the Imagine, Write, Inspire Anthology called The little book of love.

Sharon lives in East Lothian and writes around her part-time job and family life, hoping one day to be released from the former through the power of captivating and money-spinning words alone. She has had short stories and flash pieces published on-line and in magazines, including Writers’ Forum, The Moth and Sentinel Literary, and won first prize in the 2016 HISSAC short story award. She is currently studying an OU creative writing course.

Some days, when Mark Dixon’s small but highly destructive children are safely tucked up in bed, he can summon up enough energy to put his imagination to work. He steals ideas without compunction - mostly from demode French philosophers of the 1980’s - folding their cues into whatever ridiculous weirdness he can hoover up from all his years of living. He cites influences that include Richard Brautigan, Victor Pelevin and Mark Danielewski. This year, Mark Dixon has been published by Sein Und Werden magazine and longlisted for the Storgy short story competition.

Mandy has won numerous writing competitions and been placed and shortlisted in many others, including those run by Fish, InkTears, English Pen, The Telegraph, Bare Fiction, Reader’s Digest, and Bradt Travel Guides/Independent on Sunday. She won the British Guild of Travel Writers New Travel Writer Award 2014, and was runner-up in the 2016 Dragonfly Tea/Henley Literature Festival Short Story Competition. A selection of her short stories will be showcased in a forthcoming InkTears anthology.

Amanda O’Callaghan’s short stories and flash fiction have been published and won awards in Australia, UK, and Ireland. 
A former advertising executive, she studied English at King’s College London, and holds a PhD in English from the University of Queensland. She has been awarded a Queensland Literary Fellowship to complete her first collection of short stories. She lives in Brisbane.

Ingrid Jendrzejewski grew up in southern Indiana and studied creative writing and English literature at the University of Evansville before going on to study physics at the University of Cambridge.  Her current research interests focus on representations of science, mathematics and technology in stage plays.  She has soft spots for reading,  programming, cryptic crossword puzzles and, of course, writing; her work has appeared in Vine Leaves, Eating My Words: The 2014 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology, The Fast-Forward Festival, The Sixth Yamadera Basho Memorial Museum English Haiku Collection and The Mainichi.

Karen Lethlean is a retired English teacher, whose essay ‘When Did We’ was included Caught in the Breeze: 10 Essays, concerning Australian identity published by Blemish Canberra. ‘The Fake One’ appeared in Journey: Experiences with Breast Cancer BusyBird Publishing. She won the Torquay Froth and Bubble literary festival competition in 2010. Karen’s work has been published in some literary magazines and has won writing awards such as runner up Winter Solstice, Wild Words.org with Red, Yellow & Black. In her other life Karen is a triathlete and has done Hawaii Ironman twice!

Sandra Crook, a former Human Resources Manager, was born in the north-west of England, but after several years living and working in South Africa, Germany and Spain, and cruising the waterways of France in a Dutch barge, she has recently settled on the Dorset coast. Her writing career began in the late nineties, when two of her articles were published by the Financial Times Weekend supplement.  This pinnacle of journalistic success was, sadly, never again revisited, though further articles for regional and animal magazines were accepted before she began writing short fiction.  She has had short stories published in a number of anthologies, and enjoyed writing success in several competitions.  Shortly before turning her attention to relocating earlier this year, she won competitions in Flash 500, Writing Magazine and Writers’ Forum, and her story, Finn, was awarded second place in the 2015 Magic Oxygen Literary Prize by a panel of 19 judges from four continents. This year she also won both first and second prize in the Flash 500 Annual Short Story Competition with Triangles and Rosemary’s Baby.

Alice Cairns and Mary Trend are recent graduates who have been writing together since they were seven years old. At Oxford University they collaborated on a series of student plays, from a modern retelling of The Comedy of Errors to a Victorian era ghost story. Since graduating last year, they won Toasted Fiction Theatre's radio play competition and had their entry recorded in front of a studio audience. It will be released as a podcast on iTunes soon! They also write a blog - Milk & Honey - that looks at ways of relishing the reading experience by matching a book to the perfect season, snack and cup of tea! What's more, they were featured in an InkTears blogpost on how to write with a partner.

Emma J Myatt is a full time mother and full time writer who runs a holiday let/writers' retreat business. She also keeps chickens, gets lovingly bossed about by her cats and her favourite hobby is ignoring the housework. She's had a tussle with early stage breast cancer this year but is glad to say she's winning and the whole thing has been one big inspiration to write and live even more. She writes whenever she can, reads as much as possible, loves cooking, walks along the coastal path where she lives for inspiration and swims to keep fit. She's not quite sure how she fits everything in but somehow, she does. She's won a few competitions in the past, including the Just Write/Writing Magazine 2016 competition, Flash500, Hour of Writes weekly competition (a few times) and been runner up/shortlisted/honourably mentioned/highly commended in lots more. She loves writing and is perfectly happy when she's at the keyboard. Read more at emmajmyatt.wordpress.com

Hooked on writing flash fiction after a workshop with Tania Hershman in 2012, Jude's since been successful in several flash fiction competitions including the Fish Flash Fiction Prize, the National Flash Fiction Day Micro Award and the Exeter Flash Fiction prize. She launched the Bath Flash Fiction Award this year and has been co-running The Bath Short Story Award since 2012. Jude is published in the Fish Prize Anthology, 2014, in Cinnamon Press and on Visual Verse. With her colleague at Writing Events Bath, she leads creative writing sessions and puts on author events in cafes and libraries in Bath. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University.

Maureen Gallagher’s poetry, literary criticism and short stories have been published in magazines and journals worldwide. She has won prizes and been shortlisted in many competitions. In October she was longlisted in the Mslexia Novel Competition. She has tutored creative writing courses in the Galway Education Centre and the Western Writers’ Centre. Her first collection of poetry, Calling the Tune, was published by Wordsonthestreet Press in December 2008. 

Louise Kennedy grew up in Holywood, Co Down. She has been cooking and running restaurants for twenty five years and started writing in January 2014. Now the toothpaste is out of the tube and it won’t go back in. She lives in Sligo in the West of Ireland and writes in a shed in her garden while her husband, son and daughter are sleeping.

Russell Reader won first prize in the New Writer Magazine’s Prose and Poetry Awards 2013, and has been shortlisted by Fish Publishing, Flash 500, Words with Jam and Creative Writing Matters. He had also been longlisted for BBC Radio Four Opening Lines, and published by Litro and Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine. He lives in Lancaster, England.

Tamzin is an actor by profession, and a writer in her soul. She also recently became a Director, writing and directing her first short film, AMERICAN VIRGIN. She lives in Islington, Sussex and various parts of America, depending on her jobs. She attended Cambridge University where she studied Literature and Education. She owns a Miniature Dachshund called Minerva. She likes dark chocolate and the smell of Frankincense burning in the Souq.

Krishan Coupland is on the Creative Writing PhD programme at the University of East Anglia. His writing has appeared in Ambit, Aesthetica, Litro and Fractured West. He won the Manchester Fiction Prize in 2011, and in his spare time he runs and edits a literary magazine. His website is www.krishancoupland.co.uk.

Scott Whittaker is a scrimshanking philosophunculist, an argle-bargling
blatherskite and a bloviating apple-knocker. He collects obscure words
and makes up stories.

Helen Victoria Anderson is a North East-based writer of poetry and prose. She has an MA (with Distinction) in Creative Writing from Teesside University. Helen’s work has been published in Alliterati, Confingo, Material, Miracle, The Black Light Engine Room and Fat Damsel magazines, as well as in a number of anthologies. She was also awarded First Prize in the Bridgwater Homestart Short Story Competition 2013, judged by Dame Margaret Drabble. 

She is about to publish a memoir, Piece by Piece, about the loss of her teenage daughter to cancer. Helen has a website www.helenvictoriaanderson.co.uk

Eileen Herbert-Goodall holds a Doctorate of Creative Arts, which she attained from the University of the Sunshine Coast (USC), Queensland, Australia. She teaches high school students through the university's Creative Writing Excellence Program. She also works with adults who wish to improve their reading and writing skills. She is presently working on a collection of short stories.

Angus Stewart is an aspiring writer, amateur photographer, and English graduate. He was born in Dundee, Scotland, studied in Manchester, England, and is the loving mother and father figure to a small border collie named Jan.

Richard Spalding is a precociously talented 8 year old boy. He has not been published before, but give him a break, he's only eight. [Editor: good beard for an 8-year old...]

Alex writes short stories and flash fiction in an attempt to avoid reality. Her body lives in Wales, her mind is always elsewhere. She has a MLitt in Creative Writing and has been published in magazines, journals and anthologies.  The universe has long decided that she is a close-but-no-cigar type of person, which means she has perfected the art of getting placed and shortlisted in numerous writing competitions without actually ever winning. It’s quite a skill.