Amanda Dalton is a poet and playwright. Her collections How To Disappear, Stray and Fantastic Voyage (2024) are published by Bloodaxe. Pamphlets include 30 Poems In Thirty Days (Arc) and Notes on Water (smith|doorstop). She is a visiting lecturer at Manchester University and MMU’s Writing School, and an RLF Fellow. Amanda lives in Hebden Bridge. Her website is at amandadalton.co.uk

Andrew McCloy is a writer, journalist and consultant specialising in walking and outdoor recreation. He has written and edited 20 books, including Great Walks on the England Coast Path, Land’s End to John o’Groats and Exploring Roman Britain. He walked the full length of the Pennine Way in 2015 to celebrate both his and the trail’s 50th birthday, resulting in an award-winning book that chronicles both his own walk and the Pennine Way’s remarkable story. Andrew has also worked for the Ramblers, community transport and is currently Walks Programme Manager for the Youth Hostels Association. For 12 years he was an elected Board Member of the Peak District National Park Authority, including five years as Chair, and is currently Chair of the charity Campaign for National Parks.

Clare Pollard’s sixth collection of poetry with Bloodaxe is Lives of the Female Poets. Her poem ‘Pollen’ was nominated for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. Clare has also recently written the children’s novel The Untameables and the adult novel The Modern Fairies, which won the Tadeusz Bradecki Prize. She is the Artistic Director of Winchester Poetry Festival.

Joan Smith is a columnist, author and feminist writer. She has published half a dozen novels and many works of non-fiction, including Misogynies. She chaired the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board for eight years. She is also a former chair of the PEN Writers in Prison Committee. Her latest book Unfortunately, She Was A Nymphomanic rescues the women of the early Roman empire from ancient and modern misogyny. 

Katherine Clements is an author, editor and coach for writers. She writes dark historical fiction; her most recent book is The Coffin Path which was nominated for the HWA Gold Crown Award and is now in development for the screen. She writes The Inkwell on Substack where she hosts a growing community of writers interested in creating productive and rewarding writing lives. Her next book, Turbine 34, is a novella, commissioned as part of the Northern Weird Project, which will be released in November 2025.

“What I love about storytelling is its simplicity. Stories meet us half way and we, the audience, have to be complicit for them to be successful. The stories I like to tell are fun, inviting and light hearted – even the serious ones! I believe that storytelling has a unique ability to connect people, not only to each other but to the past, the future and to the world around us.” – Ian Douglas.

Ian has been telling stories at festivals, schools, libraries and on street corners both nationally and internationally for over 30 years. Originally a street theatre performer, fire breather and stilt walker, Ian has founded two story-based theatre companies. He has also worked as a theatre practitioner in residence for organisations across the North including Northern Stage and Live Theatre in Newcastle and most recently, Theatre by the Lake in Keswick.

During his career, Ian has had the privilege to sit at the knee of renowned storytellers such as Duncan Williamson and at present is apprenticed to the Grasmere-based storyteller Taffy Thomas MBE.

Ian hails from West Yorkshire but now lives with the love of his life on a narrow boat wherever the neighbours are nice.

Naomi Booth is the author of the short-story collection Animals at Night and the novels Sealed and Exit Management. Her work has been listed for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, included in the Guardian’s Best Fiction of the year 2020, and shortlisted for the Edgehill Prize. Her story, ‘Sour Hall’, which is set in the Calder Valley, won the Edgehill Reader’s Award and was adapted into an Audible Originals drama series. Naomi was born in Bradford and grew up in West Yorkshire. She now lives in York and is Professor or Creative Writing at Durham University. Her most recent novel, raw content, is set between York and the Colne Valley, and was described by nb magazinee as a ‘beautiful and thought-provoking story of post-natal mental health, violence, paranoia and unconditional love in all its forms’.

Rozie Kelly is a novelist based in West Yorkshire. After reading English Literature and Creative Writing she moved to Hebden Bridge, where she works for the Arvon Foundation, hosting creative writing courses.

She was shortlisted for the PFD Queer Fiction Prize 2023 and was one of the eight participants in the inaugural Prototype Development Programme 2024. She won the 2024 NorthBound Book Award for Kingfisher, her debut novel.’

Ursula Holden Gill is a Dramatherapist, based in West Yorkshire. However, as Storytelling continues to inform much of her work, she now pursues it for pleasure and as part of her continued professional development, focusing on short term commissions within the community. Although her commitment to her vocation means that she can no longer undertake international commissions, Ursula still relishes mingling music, movement and playful interaction into the tales of her traditional folk heritage to connect children of all ages (4 to 104) with their creativity. This will be her fourth appearance at Todmorden Book Festival and as ever, she is looking forward to engaging our younger audiences.

In 2012 Ursula was voted Best Newcomer at The British Awards for Storytelling Excellence.

Dr Anita Sethi was born in Manchester, UK and is an award-winning writer and author of the acclaimed book I Belong Here: a Journey Along the Backbone of Britain which won a Books Are My Bag award, and was nominated for the Wainwright Prize for UK Nature Writing, the Great Outdoors Award and Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize for outstanding books evoking ‘the spirit of a place’. I Belong Here was praised as a “thing of beauty” by the Sunday Times, “a memoir of rare power” by the Guardian, and “an amazing odyssey: inspiring, powerful, encouraging and incredibly brave” by the Independent. It was selected as Stanfords Book of the Month, chosen as a Hottest Book of the Year by the Guardian and one of the best travel books by Wanderlust and the Telegraph. It was selected as the Best Travelogue of the Year by the Independent.

Bobby Joseph is an acclaimed South London comic creator whose work has often challenged and inspired its readers. His early work includes the creation of cult comic classic Skank magazine, where his best-known strip, “Scotland Yardie”, first featured, and was later published by Knockabout Press.

He has written for The Guardian newspaper, Dazed and Confused, and Vice.com. His comic work was a prominent feature at the Anarchy in the UK comic exhibition at the British Library in 2015 and was seen by over 60,000 visitors. 

Since the beginning of his career, he has been a vocal advocate for diversity and representation in comic books. His graphic novel, Scotland Yardie, published by Knockabout Comics in 2017, was the first diverse graphic novel to be studied as a module on an English Literature MA course at King’s College, London. 

As a Secondary school teacher, he believes that comics are a gateway to literacy and learning and has used comics in the classroom to build subject knowledge. His forthcoming graphic novel – My Dad Fights Demons! will be released in September 2025 by Self-Made Hero. He is the fifth incumbent to be named Comics Laureate, and the first comic book creator of Indian origin to become Comics Laureate.

David Gaffney lives in Manchester. He is the author of three novels, six short story collections, and two graphic novels with Dan Berry. His short story collection Concrete Fields (Salt Publishing 2023) was long listed for the Edgehill Short Story Prize and his prose poetry collection, Whale, was published by Osmosis in 2024. He is Senior Manager for literature at Arts Council England.

John Harris is a prize-winning writer, journalist, and presenter. He has a weekly column in The Guardian, hosts its Politics Weekly UK podcast, and co-created its BAFTA-nominated video series Anywhere But Westminster. He also writes regularly for the music magazine Mojo, and is the author of the acclaimed pop-cultural history of the 1990s The Last Party, as well as the definitive work on Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of The Moon. He has been awarded the Orwell Prize for Political Journalism and the UK Press Award for Political Commentator of the year. He was born in Manchester, and wishes he still lived there.

Kate Evans is a cartoonist, graphic novelist, artist, author, and quilter.

The subject of her pen is wide-ranging – from feminist fairy stories, through birth and breastfeeding to refugee relief and revolutionary socialism. She was living in a tree on the route of the Newbury Bypass road protest when she was commissioned by The Guardian newspaper to draw cartoons from the tree tops .Her graphic biography of Rosa Luxemburg, Red Rosa, has 18 foreign editions. Threads from the Refugee Crisis was the first graphic novel to be nominated for the Orwell Prize for journalism. She does the regular strip “Thoughts from a Broad” for New Internationalist magazine.

An avid Austen fan, Patchwork is structured around the quilt that Jane Austen made. Evans situates Austen’s life story in the wider fabric of society of Regency England through a series of thread paintings, which she has then sewn into a quilt which will be available to view at the end of the talk.

Ian hails from West Yorkshire but now lives with the love of his life on a narrow boat wherever the neighbours are nice.

Neil McRobert is a writer, podcaster and recovering academic. He fled the haunted halls of higher education, to settle in an old northern village, where he writes about scary things and runs the landmark horror podcast, Talking Scared. Good Boy is his debut novella. Neil also regularly writes on horror-themed topics for The Guardian, Vulture, Elle and Esquire. When he’s not reading, writing, or interviewing famous horror novelists, he’s out in the fields with his dog, Ted.

Sarah Corbett has published six poetry collections, including most recently The Ishtar Gate (Pavilion Poetry/Liverpool University Press, 2025), and the verse-novel And She Was (Pavilion Poetry 2015). Her work has been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot and Forward Poetry prizes and widely anthologised and translated. Her debut collection The Red Wardrobe (Seren books, 1998) also won an Eric Gregory Award for Poetry. She also writes fiction and has won two Northern Writer’s Awards for fiction. In 2022 Sarah produced and directed the Sylvia Plath Literary Festival in Hebden Bridge and Heptonstall and co-edited After Sylvia: Poems and Essays in Celebration of Sylvia Plath (Nine Arches Press, 2022). Sarah was a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing for Lancaster University (2009-25) and produced a wide range of public events, creative writing workshops and projects. She now writes full-time.

Rob Chapman’s  first published book, Selling The Sixties. The Pirates And Pop Music Radio (Routledge 1992) was a ground breaking history of offshore radio in the 1960s. He wrote the definitive Syd Barrett biography A Very Irregular Head (Faber & Faber 2010) and Psychedelia And Other Colours (Faber & Faber 2015) He has also self-published two memoirs, Ad Lib : Repeat To Fade (2020) and All I Want Is Out Of Here (2021). His recently published novel Unsung : Unsaid. Syd and Nick In Absentia is based around a series of fictional encounters between Syd Barrett and Nick Drake in 1974. Rob was also for many years a music journalist for The Times, Mojo, and Uncut and a freelance broadcaster with the BBC National network (on Radios 1,2,4 and 5) Back in the day he was singer and lyricist with the Bristol based punk group Glaxo Babies.

Andrew Bibby is a professional writer and journalist who has been living in the Calder valley for over thirty years. Active in the 1990s in the local campaign for access rights to the moorlands which helped achieve legislative reform in 2000, he celebrated these new rights for walkers with a set of five ‘Freedom to Roam’ guide books to northern uplands (published by Frances Lincoln and the Ramblers) and with his book Backbone of England (also Frances Lincoln) on Pennine landscapes.

His most recent book, The Borders: The Lands We Share (Gritstone Publishing, 2025), looks at the way human activity is shaping the land on both sides of the Scottish/English border and is based on a walk he undertook from Edinburgh south to Catterick on the River Swale in North Yorkshire. Among a wide range of other issues explored in the book Andrew investigates the way that the Pennine Way was originally discussed and planned, as well as looking at the early history of the national parks and national nature reserves in Britain.

Andrew’s books have twice won awards from the Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild, with his exploration of Jurassic oolite landscapes, Back Roads through Middle England (Gritstone Publishing) winning the Guild’s coveted Outdoor Book of the Year prize.

Bec Evans is an author, coach and consultant dedicated to helping writers stay motivated. Starting her career in a bookshop, Bec moved into publishing, managed teams of writers, and was a centre director for Arvon at Lumb Bank. Bec supports writers, writing groups, universities and publishers through The Written Academy and shares insight in her weekly newsletter Breakthroughs and Blocks, a Substack bestseller. She is co-author of Mslexia’s Diary & Planner and her latest book is Written: How to Keep Writing and Build a Habit That Lasts. Her first book, How to Have a Happy Hustle won a Business Book Award in 2020.

Denise Mina is the bestselling author of the Garnethill trilogy, the Paddy Meehan series and the Alex Morrow series, as well as historical novels Rizzio, Three Fires and The Second Murderer, a Philip Marlowe novel for the Chandler estate. Her latest novel The Good Liar centres on a forensic expert responsible for a miscarriage of justice. 

She has won the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award twice, the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year twice, the Gordon Burn Prize and was inducted into the Crime Writers’ Association Hall of Fame in 2014. Denise also writes graphic novels and plays, and presents on television and radio. She studied law at Glasgow University and dropped out of a PhD at Strathclyde Law School when Garnethill was first published. Thirty years later Strathclyde awarded her an honourary PhD.

John Robb is a many-faceted creature.Not just a well known face from TV but also a best selling author, musician, journalist,  TV presenter, music website boss, book publisher, festival boss, Eco champion, vegan behemoth and punk rock warlord as well as TV and radio talking head plus singer from post-punk critically acclaimed mainstays The Membranes.

John Robb is all these things and more and his 2026 memoirs will cover all of this and his adventures in punk and post punk and much more and is getting made into a film. His recently released books ‘The Art Of Darkness – the History Of Goth’ and Oasis, ’Live Forever’ are both acclaimed worldwide pop culture best sellers and is currently working on his memoirs. He grew up in Blackpool (who have made him an ambassador for the town) before punk rock came along and saved his life. In the post-punk era he formed the Membranes – the highly influential post-punk band whose current critically eulogised albums keep pushing forward with added choirs and textures.

He was one of the leading post-punk fanzine writers in the UK with ‘Rox’ before he went on to write for the rock press with Sounds in the 80s. He was the first person to interview Nirvana and coined the expression Britpop and was instrumental in documenting the Madchester scene with his writing. His website louderthanwar.com is currently one of the top 3 most read music and culture sites in the UK and at the front of diverse modern culture and saw him nearly release the Fontaines DC first single and give Charli XCX her first review amongst other many firsts.  He is a constant on TV and radio commenting on music, culture and politics and one of the UK’s leading in conversation hosts who has his own successful youtube channel as well as his own books and music festival in Manchester every year called Louder Than Words. 

He has written many best selling pop culture books like ‘Punk Rock – an Oral History’ and The Stone Roses and the Resurrection of British Pop’  and in 2022 a  book with the leading maverick green energy boss Dale Vince from Ecotricity called ‘Manifesto’. He is working on the ground-breaking Green Britain Academy and a zero carbon clothing line called ‘Dark Forest’. 

Gordon Corera is the co-host of “The Rest is Classified” podcast— a top-rated weekly show looking at the world of security and intelligence. He has been covering national security, cyber security intelligence, terrorism, and proliferation for twenty-five years, including two decades as a Security Correspondent for BBC News. He has made documentary series about MI6, the CIA, and Russia and is the author of a number of books including Russians Among Us, the hunt for Putin’s spies; MI6: Life and Death in the British Secret Service and, most recently, “The Spy in the Archive- How one man tried to kill the KGB”, the story of Vasili Mitrokhin.

Kerry Andrew (they/them) is a UK-based writer, composer and performer, and the author of three literary novels, Swansong and SKIN (both Jonathan Cape) and We Are Together Because (Atlantic Books). The latter was The New European’s Fiction Book of 2024 and a Marie Claire Best Books 2024. They won the Edinburgh Short Story Award 2024, a Northern Writers’ Award for Fiction 2025, and have been twice shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award. With a PhD in composition from the University of York and four British Composer Awards, Kerry specialises in experimental vocal and choral music, music-theatre and community music, creates alt-folk as You Are Wolf and co-founded the award-winning Juice Vocal Ensemble.

Stephen May’s acclaimed books include Sell Us The Rope and Life! Death! Prizes! He has been shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and the Guardian‘s Not the Booker Prize and is a past winner of the Reader’s Choice Award at the Wales Book of the Year. His seventh novel, Green Ink, was published in February 2025 by Swift Press. He is also an experienced Creative Writing teacher and the author of Write A Novel and Get It Published.