The 60 minute writer

Tasha Kavanagh has an MA in Creative Writing from UEA where she studied under Malcolm Bradbury and Rose Tremain. She has worked as a film editor on features including 'Twelve Monkeys', 'Seven Years in Tibet' and 'The Talented Mr Ripley' and has had 10 children's books published. Her debut novel 'Things We Have in Common' was published by Canongate in 2015 to critical acclaim and was shortlisted for major prizes including the Costa 1st Novel and Desmond Elliott Prize. She is currently writing her second novel.

Farhana Khalique is a writer, voice over artist, teacher, and PhD student from south-west London. She’s a co-editor of Flash Fusion (2024), and her writing has appeared in Flash Fiction Festival Six, Tales from the City, Best Small Fictions, and more. Farhana has judged the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize and she’s a submissions editor at SmokeLong Quarterly. She’s been teaching English for over 15 years, and she’s taught writing workshops with Writers & Artists, SmokeLong, Flash Fiction Festival, and more. She’s currently doing her PhD at Queen Mary, University of London.

Claire Allen is a published author of fiction and poetry and teaches literature and creative writing at City Lit. Her first two novels, The Mountain of Light and Protection, were published by Headline Review in 2004 and 2006. Her most recent novel, The Blackbird, was published by small independent publisher Henningham Family Press in 2020.

Rosie Fiore has had eight novels published to critical acclaim by Struik, Quercus and Allen & Unwin. Her speculative fiction title, The After Wife, published by Orion, was sold in translation in nine countries and received a film option in China. She is also a copywriter, journalist and playwright. Rosie is a tutor and mentor on Jericho Writers' Ultimate Novel Writing Course. She holds an MA in Creative Writing and a Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education. She is the incumbent Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Middlesex University.

Sarah Leipciger’s debut novel, The Mountain Can Wait, was published in 2015 with Tinder Press in the UK and Little, Brown in the US. She has had short stories shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, the Fish Prize and the Asham Award, and is a past winner of THIS Magazine’s Great Canadian Literary Hunt. She has also written non-fiction for The Guardian and The Toronto Star. She has facilitated workshops at several literature events, including the Edinburgh International Book Festival, and has been teaching fiction and life writing to young people and adults in prisons since 2003; she is currently the Creative Writing tutor at HMP Brixton in London. Her second novel, Coming Up for Air, will be published in February 2020 with Doubleday UK and House of Anansi Press in Canada. Doubleday UK has also procured her third novel, with a release date TBA. She is a PhD student in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths University.

Rosie Chard is a novelist, writing tutor, freelance editor, writing mentor and English language teacher. After qualifying as a landscape architect, she lived and worked in Denmark and Canada for several years, designing gardens, parks, and urban spaces. Inspired by the enormous skies and harsh winters of the Prairies she wrote her first novel Seal Intestine Raincoat, published in 2009 by NeWest Press. It won the 2010 Alberta Trade Fiction Book Award and received an honourable mention for the Sunburst Fiction Award the same year. She was also shortlisted for the 2010 John Hirsch award for the Most Promising Manitoba writer. Her second novel The Insistent Garden, also published by NeWest Press, was the recipient of the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction in Canada in 2014. The Eavesdroppers, her third novel was published by NeWest Press in September 2018. She is currently writing her fifth novel. Www.rosiechard.org.