The Writers’ Toolkit 2009

The Writers’ Toolkit 2009

This day long conference-style event happened on Saturday 21st November 2009 and was a fantastic day of seminars, discussion sessions and networking. Writers and speakers came from all over the UK to make new contacts and gain further knowledge about what is happening and coming up in the writing community.

Writing West Midlands officially announced itself at the end of this day – and can now list this conference as the first of its successful activities.

Below is some feedback from the day.

FEEDBACK:

A blog entry from the novelist Jenn Ashworth.

A blog entry from the writer and journalist James Walker.

Other comments:

“A very good day and very well planned, covering all bases.”

“Excellent. At last something that’s really useful and recognises we don’t have much money.”

“I feel welcomed back to the West Midlands in a way that it took years to achieve in London. Makes me actually feel that being a writer is a good thing!”

“It was difficult to choose between the sessions in each section as it all seemed so worthwhile. The sessions I attended were all excellent – useful and informative.”

“Very interesting, stimulating. Felt as though diversity of written media was covered well (ie prose, poetry, radio etc)”

“This was my second year of attendance and I really enjoyed it.”

“Excellent opportunity, worthwhile day.”

“Fantastic, unrivalled (as a regional networking opportunity) – have made good connections that will help me and others.”

Panellists and speakers 2009 (details were correct during 2009)

Jenn Ashworth‘s first novel A Kind of Intimacy was published by Arcadia in 2009. Her blog, Every Day I Lie A Little, www.jennashworth.blogspot.com won a Manchester Literary Festival Prize in 2008. The two events are not related, but since giving up her work to become a full-time writer Jenn has split her time between traditional writing projects and the design and delivery of online networks for writers: www.prestonwritingnetwork.com. She’s also published many short stories and flash fictions through online magazines. Jenn is based in Preston, Lancashire.

Richard Beard is a writer, and the Director of the National Academy of Writing, currently hosted at Birmingham City University.  He has published four novels and three books of Creative Non-fiction, most recently the biography Becoming Drusilla (Harvill Secker).

Jo Bell is a poet and Co-ordinator of National Poetry Day. She is a trustee of Ledbury Poetry Festival and a director of Living Derby, a creative community company. Her work includes residencies, performance, festival planning and event management, and in her writing she addresses relationships, histories and the life of a narrowboat-dweller. She works to raise the standards of performance for so-called ‘page poets’ and to broaden the audience for live literature. Her collection Navigation and other work is available at www.bell-jar.co.uk.

Karl Binder is the Managing Director of Birmingham-based Web Design Agency ‘Adhere’, and a Founding Director of the region’s creative sector representative body ‘Creative Republic’ where he is actively involved in social media networks in the region. Karl’s background is in visual design for screen and print media but also includes web software, video and audio creation. www.karlbinder.co.uk / www.theadherecreative.com

Cathy Bolton is Director of Manchester Literature Festival and previously worked as the Writing Development Worker for Commonword Writing Development Agency and Community Publisher. She has just completed her MA in Writing at Sheffield Hallam University. She was the winner of this year’s Ictus Prize and her pamphlet collection, A Fool’s Height Short of Heaven, has just been published by Mews press. She is a founding member of the A6 Poets and a poetry ambassador for the Southbank’s Global Poetry System. Her poems and short stories have been published in a wide range of anthologies and literary magazines.

Ruth Borthwick is the newly appointed National Director of Arvon. She was formerly Head of Literature & Talks at Southbank Centre where she worked with the world’s finest writers, including Nobel Laureates Seamus Heaney, Doris Lessing, Toni Morrison, VS Naipaul, Harold Pinter and Derek Walcott. Ruth was won over by Arvon when she went to Lumb Bank in 1997 to be tutored by Jenny Uglow and Hermione Lee.  At the time Ruth was working at Spread the Word, London’s literature development agency, recommending Arvon to would-be writers and she thought she should go to find out if it was all it was cracked up to be. It surpassed all expectations, and the experience still sings. In the 1980s, Ruth lived in Australia and worked in the first bookshop there to stock gay books. (Yes, it is in living memory.)  She’s also worked as a commissioning editor, and is Poetry Editor for the journal Soundings, a board member of Wasafiri and on the steering committee of The Complete Works, a mentoring scheme for Black and Asian poets.

Josephine Brady is Senior Lecturer in English with specific expertise in the field of children’s writing. As a former primary teacher and English co-ordinator, she has first-hand experience of teaching and learning in schools and has for many years, acted in an English advisory role for private companies. She is a former member of Folens Publishers Teaching Advisory Board (Primary) and a current committee member of NATE (National Association of Teachers of English). She regularly contributes to NATE’s ‘Classroom’ publication and a recent article exploring teachers’ perceptions of children’s writing has been published in the international journal English in Education (Summer Edition, 2009). She is a founding member of the Literacy Action Research Group at Birmingham City University and regularly attends and presents research at national and international conferences on the subject of children’s writing.

Antonia Byatt is Director, Literature Strategy at Arts Council England where she has the overview of funding and support for reading and writing.  Previously she was Director of the Women’s Library, London Metropolitan University, and the largest collection of women’s history in the UK. She was also Head of Literature at the South Bank Centre where she programmed major festivals such as Poetry International and a regular series of events, talks and discussions around writing.  

Catherine Clarke was Publishing Director of the Trade Books Department at OUP for several years before she joined Felicity Bryan as an agent in 2001. She represents a broad range of writers of serious non-fiction, including biography, memoir, philosophy, and history, as well as literary novelists. She also has a small and highly successful list of writers for children, including David Almond, Sally Gardner, and Meg Rosoff. www.felicitybryan.com

Bernie Corbett is a trade unionist and former journalist. He has been General Secretary of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain since 2000. In his newspaper career Bernie Corbett was chief sub-editor of The Guardian (London) and chief features sub-editor of The Independent (London). These are the UK’s two most liberal progressive national daily newspapers. Throughout his journalistic career Bernie Corbett was an activist in the National Union of Journalists and was elected as National Treasurer, Editor of the NUJ journal “Journalist”, and organiser/chief negotiator for national newspapers. He also served as organiser/negotiator for freelance journalists. Bernie Corbett is an expert on the UK media and an experienced negotiator with all the main newspaper and broadcasting organisations. In his role as General Secretary of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain he conducts extensive negotiations with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Independent Television (ITV), independent producers, theatre managers and others. He covers TV, film, radio, new media and print publishing. Bernie Corbett is a skeptical humanist and lives in unfashionable South-East London.

Helen Cross was born and brought up in the village of Newbald in East Yorkshire. Her first novel, My Summer of Love won a Betty Trask Award and became a BAFTA award-winning feature film, directed by Pawel Pawlokowksi. Her short stories have appeared in various magazines and anthologies, and her plays and stories have been broadcast on Radio 4. Helen’s second novel is The Secrets She Keeps and her third , Spilt Milk, Black Coffee was published by Bloomsbury in May 2009 (‘Empathic, memorable, defiantly beautiful’  Daily Mail. ‘A very fine look at real people behind tabloid stereotypes…fabulous’ The Times. ‘A gem of a book that joyously brings to life an interracial love affair…Cross is a fine writer with a spiky edge, a wry sense of humour and a sharp instinct.’ Metro) It will be available in paperback in May 2010. Helen’s first original screenplay, Stratford Road, is currently in development with Red Room Films and the UK Film Council. Helen is an experienced teacher of creative writing in schools and universities both in the UK and abroad. In 2004  Helen was awarded an Arts Council International Fellowship to live and work at the Banff Centre in Canada’s Rocky Mountains.  In January 2007 she traveled to India to be the British Council’s Writer in Residence at the University of Mumbai. She lives in Birmingham with her partner Andy and her two daughters, Kendra and Cleo.

Mary Cutler has been a script writer for The Archers for thirty years. This makes her the longest serving writer on the longest running soap in the world. Other work in radio includes five adaptations of Lindsey Davis’ bestselling Roman detective novels featuring Falco- and her own series Three Women and a… She wrote television scripts for Crossroads and has had two stage plays produced. She has taught script writing at Birmingham University and BCU. She ran the Birmingham Readers and Writers Festival for several years and spent seven years working for Worcestershire Libraries as a Literature Development officer. She is on the editorial board of Tindal Street Press. She was born in Birmingham and has always lived here apart from her time at University in Cambridge. Though she is very happy with her literary career so far, she still has a secret yearning to write a novel.

Ian Danby is Head of Visual Arts and Literature at Arts Council England, West Midlands. He has worked for Arts Council England for 6 years in various roles beginning with Head of Resource Development with principle responsibility for developing relationships with other regional agencies and support organisations along with developing relationships with local authorities.  Prior to working in the Arts, he was a business advisor for the Princes Trust primarily working with new creative businesses advising entrepreneurs on the principles of good business management.  Following University he was the first manager of The Custard Factory development, supporting its tenants and programming the various gallery and theatre spaces. He is a passionate believer in the central role the arts should play in people’s lives to inspire, encourage dialogue, and bring communities of people together. 

Jonathan Davidson is Chief Executive of Writing West Midlands, Associate Director of the Birmingham Book Festival and Director of Midland Creative Projects Limited. He has worked in literature development for over twenty years, running literature festivals and activities for writers and readers as well as undertaking consultancy, fundraising and training. He writes radio and stage plays and poetry. www.midlandcreative.co.uk.

Daniela de Groote was born and educated in Santiago de Chile, and undertook her postgraduate studies in the UK.  She has lived in London for 15 years, working for most of that time at the independent publishing house Arcadia Books, where she is Associate Publisher. Recent successful commissions include Corinne Hofmann’s The White Masai, with over 150,000 copies sold of Hofmann’s three titles published in English, and A Kind of Intimacy by Jenn Ashworth, which was featured in the Waterstone’s 2009 New Voices promotion and which is currently shortlisted for the Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize.

David Edgar is a playwright and President of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain. His plays include The National Interest, Excuses Excuses, Dick Deterred, Saigon Rose, Wreckers, Mary Barnes, Entertaining Strangers, Destiny, The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Maydays, The Shape of the Table, Pentecost and Albert Speer. He is the founder of the University of Birmingham’s MPhil Playwriting course. He was born – and still lives – in Birmingham.

Lorraine Francis runs Weave Marketing, a business development and marketing consultancy, having been Executive Director of Birmingham Forward where she developed an extensive network of senior level contacts across the city. In addition, Lorraine is on the Board of the Birmingham Book Festival, an Advisory Group member for Birmingham Common Purpose and board observer of Creative Republic, a body established to promote the region’s creative and cultural sector.  Until recently she was an active regional Fellow of the RSA (Royal Society of Arts) and has held a range of voluntary roles including regional director for the Professional Marketing Forum and former member of the Chairman’s Circle at Symphony Hall.  Lorraine has also been a member of the advisory group at Fairbridge West Midlands, a Trustee of Brewery Arts in Cirencester and was a 2009 and 1996 Matrix programme graduate of Common Purpose Birmingham. www.weavemarketing.co.uk

Danielle Fuller is an academic who teaches in the Department of American & Canadian Studies at the University of Birmingham. Inspired in part by her own experiences of working in the UK publishing industry, she has long-term research interests in literary-cultural production both here in the UK and in North America. She is the author of various articles on these topics, as well as a prize-winning academic monograph, Writing the Everyday: Atlantic Canadian Women’s Textual Communities (published in Canada by McGill-Queen’s University Press).  Most recently, she has been leading a collaborative research project that investigates communities of readers and large-scale reading events in the UK, USA and Canada. She is on the Board of the Birmingham Book Festival.

Chloe Garner has been Director of Ledbury Poetry Festival for three years. In 2009 The Guardian wrote: “This celebration of verse is the largest of its kind in the UK and also the most energised, giving a real sense of poetry as an important living, contemporary literary form.” The Festival also runs a schools and community programme and a prestigious annual poetry competition. Previously Chloe  worked as Visitor Manager at Charleston, the Bloomsbury House in Sussex, where she ran the annual Charleston Festival and launched Small Wonder: The Short Story Festival. She also worked as Press Officer for Dove Cottage, William Wordsworth’s home in the Lake District, assisting with the contemporary poetry season.

Formerly a teen magazine agony uncle, Mike Gayle is the author of seven bestselling novels including My Legendary Girlfriend, Brand New Friend and Wish You Were Here. His most recent publication is a non-fiction book entitled The To Do List. He has contributed to a number of publications including: The Guardian, The Times, FHM, Cosmopolitan and Top of The Pops magazine.

Roz Goddard’s first full collection of poetry, How to Dismantle a Hotel Room, was published in 2006, details of her work can be found at: www.rozgoddard.com. Her poetry has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and 4. During 2003-4 she was appointed Birmingham’s Poet Laureate. She gives readings of her work across the country and she runs workshops and courses, including for the Arvon Foundation and mentors individual writers. She is currently studying for an MPhil in writing at Glamorgan University. She is also on the Board of the Birmingham Book Festival.

Sophie Hannah is a bestselling crime fiction writer and poet. Her psychological thrillers Little Face, Hurting Distance and The Point of Rescue have sold 300,000 copies in the UK, and are also published or about to be published in numerous other countries around the world. Little Face was longlisted for the 2007 Theakston’s Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year Award and the IMPAC Award. Hurting Distance was longlisted for the 2008 Theakston’s Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year Award. Sophie’s fifth collection of poetry, Pessimism for Beginners, was shortlisted for the 2007 TS Eliot Award, and in 2004 she won first prize in the Daphne Du Maurier Festival Short Story Competition for her suspense story The Octopus Nest, which is now published in her first collection of short stories The Fantastic Book of Everybody’s Secrets. Sophie’s poetry is studied at GCSE, A-level and degree level across the UK. From 1997 to 1999 she was Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge, and between 1999 and 2001 she was a fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford. She lives in West Yorkshire with her husband and two children.

Kevin Jeffery began professional life as a secondary English teacher. After 12 years, and leading English Departments in two different comprehensive schools, he became English Adviser/Inspector for Gloucestershire from 1986 – 1996, also acting as Ofsted Registered Inspector on a number of both primary and secondary inspections. In 1996, Kevin joined John Stannard at the DFES to establish first the National Literacy Project and then the National Literacy Strategy, as Assistant National Director.  In December 1999 he left the Strategies in order to work more closely with a particular group of schools, setting up the Gloucester Education Action Zone in January 2000.  Kevin stayed with the Gloucester EAZ until 2005, when he moved to a similar role in Sandwell, West Midlands, to set up the Wednesbury Learning Community. He presently combines the role of Director of Wednesbury Learning Community with two other roles: Black Country Challenge co-ordinator for Sandwell, and Sandwell Literacy Champion.

Caroline Jester is Dramaturg at The Birmingham REP, providing dramaturgical support to writers and other artists working in any area of the REP – in the Main House, The Door, on a Young REP show or a Learning and Participation and BME theatre projects. Freelance theatre directing and dramaturgy includes a national tour of David Hare’s The Blue Room, work for Menagerie Theatre, Mphil in playwriting at Birmingham University, the Arvon Foundation and Kali Theatre. www.birmingham-rep.co.uk.

Adrian Johnson is Literature Officer for Arts Council England – West Midlands. In 2009 he became the 14^th Birmingham Poet Laureate and his first, musical live literature show  Love and Taxes debuts at the Wolverhampton Arena on 11 December 2009. In his spare time he also produces the first laureate for storytelling which kicks off across the country in January 2010. Find out more at: http://kindandgenerous.weebly.com/

Philippa Johnston is Director of literaturetraining www.literaturetraining.com, a first stop shop for writers and literature professionals across the UK looking for professional development information and advice, and has many years’ experience of helping writers to move forward professionally and achieve their goals. She also works as a freelance researcher and project manager.

Fiona Kelcher works in Development for BBC Radio Drama, based in Birmingham. She has produced and directed drama and readings, including a dramatisation of Lady Audley’s Secret for Woman’s Hour, The Admirable Crichton as a Saturday Play for Radio 4, and Dos and Don’ts for the Mentally Interesting, which has been nominated for the 2009 Mental Health in the Media Awards. She has also directed The Archers for Radio 4 and Silver Street on the Asian Network. Current projects include collaborating with Penguin and the National Theatre on a crime drama for Radio 7 with young writers, and producing a “Wire” for Radio 3′s new writing slot. Previously she worked in development for independent TV production company Mentorn Oxford.

Ella Kelly is a Television Producer for BBC Drama Productions. She has been producing on Doctors for 2 years and produced nearly 200 episodes.  In 2007 Ella Line Produced a short film, Small Dark Places.  She trained as an actor and moved into production in 2003 starting in Radio Drama then moved into development with North West Playwrights and Granada before joining Doctors.

Dan Lawson is Head of Production, Development & Inward Investment for the regional screen agency Screen WM, covering Birmingham and the West Midlands region. He heads up the agency’s support for production and development in the film, television and animation sectors, including development funds and talent development schemes. Recent successes for the agency include securing the relocation of major primetime drama series Survivors and Hustle to the region, and investing in innovative filmmaking projects including Faintheart and 1 Day, as well as being one of the first regions to partner with Channel 4 on the groundbreaking 4iP initiative. Dan’s passion lies in storytelling and working with new talent. In 2006, he was featured in the 4Talent Creative Class for his work developing regional filmmaking talent through schemes like Digital Shorts, and he has executive produced over 30 digital short films for Screen WM including James Lees’ 2007 festival smash The Apology Line, which has screened at festivals around the world including Sundance and in 2007, won the Prix UIP for Best European Short at the Cork International Film Festival. Prior to working for Screen WM Dan studied film at university and worked in various roles on a series of short film and broadcast projects, including shorts for Channel 4 and the UK Film Council.

Alan Mahar has been Publishing Director of Tindal Street Press (now celebrating its tenth year) since it began publishing in 1999. He also founded Tindal Street Fiction Group in 1983. As well as numerous short stories, book reviews and articles, he has had two novels published: Flight Patterns (Gollancz,1999) and After the Man Before (Methuen, 2002). He has also edited anthologies, magazines and non-fiction books. In his working life, in addition to publishing activity, he has been a library assistant, English lecturer, copywriter within a workers’ co-operative and a Creative Writing tutor. Born in Liverpool, educated in London, he lives in Moseley, Birmingham with his wife and daughters. www.tindalstreet.co.uk.

Steve Manthorp has worked in the cultural sector for 25 years. He was Media Arts Officer at Arts Council England -Yorkshire from 1999-02 and Coordinator of Digital North from 2005-07. He had sole responsibility for the commissioning and project management of Bradford’s Big Screen. In 2005 he was awarded a NESTA Research Fellowship to develop new cultural content and concepts for games technologies. In 2006 he won a MELT award to develop Earthheart, a game to promote healthy lifestyles in young people. He has created heritage games for English Heritage, Yorkshire Forward and Bradford Museums and Art Galleries. Steve Manthorp has delivered a major research study and a series of seminars and workshops to the Arts Council on the potential of social technologies for arts organisations and is currently coordinator of Arts Council-West Midlands’ three year Digital Content Development Programme. He has spoken at the Museums Association Conference, EVA Conference, Art & Architecture Journal Conference on the Moving Image in the Public Environment, bTween conferences, Broadcast Asia Conference and the World Investment Conference.

Nicholas McInerny is a screenwriter and dramatist with over 75 credits in film, television, stage and radio. He was Creative Arts Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford and is currently Chair of Script, the West Midlands Agency for Dramatic Writers. Recent commissions include an Online Course for Oxford University Department for Continuing Education,  3 Radio plays about life in an Orchestra and working with Tara Arts. 

Mil Millington has written four novels, several shorts stories, one radio series, a couple of TV/film scripts, an awful, awful lot of newspaper/magazine columns/features, and more Internet-based material than you could jam into an aircraft hanger using snow-ploughs. He lives in Wolverhampton and is 5’8″.

Philip Monks is a Birmingham-based playwright and poet. His plays for young people include: Spirited with the National Youth Theatre, Rainforest Rumble & Creation for the TV Workshop, Pandora’s Box for the Midlands Arts Centre and Innocence for Karisma productions. He was Playwright In Residence at Midlands Arts Centre 2004/5 and ran TYPES (Theatre for Young People Enrichment Scheme) in 2006/7. His playwriting with young people includes: Toy Theatre, Transmissions & Interactive Playwriting projects for The Birmingham REP, writing for community plays with Theatre Works & many school-based drama (& other) writing projects for Write On – Adventures In Writing. He is a founding partner of Hoopla Productions, working on music-theatre for and with young people.

Paul Munden is Director of NAWE, the National Association of Writers in Education. As a poet, he is an Eric Gregory Award winner whose work appears in many anthologies. He has worked in schools, universities and as ‘conference poet’ covering a variety of subjects for the British Council. He is editor of Feeling the Pressure: poetry and science of climate change, published by the British Council in 2008. www.nawe.co.uk.

Judith Palmer is Director of the Poetry Society. Before joining the Poetry Society at the end of last year, she worked as a writer, broadcaster and promoter of live events. She has written extensively about art, literature and performance for The Independent, and presented poetry programmes for BBC Radio 4. After studying English Literature at Bristol University, she worked in bookselling and publishing, before taking up a freelance career promoting live literature. She worked for nine years on the South Bank Centre’s Literature programme, as well as independent tours such as the Cowboy Poets and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Alongside the poetry promotion, in an unlikely pairing, she was also the Sunday Telegraph’s dangerous sports writer. With a strong interest in collaborative and interdisciplinary practice, she has written exhibition catalogues for organisations and galleries such as ArtsAdmin, Commissions East, the Arts Catalyst, FirstSite and the Wordsworth Trust. She has created installations and events about space, folklore and the natural world for the Roundhouse and Kew Gardens; and an oral history of women magazine editors for the Women’s Library. 2006-07 she was Critical Writer in Residence in the art research institute (miriad) at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Alex Pryce is Director of the UK’s foremost podcasting enterprise, PoetCasting. In 2008 she was named ‘Art and Culture Woman of the Future’ by Real Business magazine. Alex is currently studying at the University of Leicester. Her poems have appeared in magazines including Staple, The Interpreter’s House, Room, Fortnight Review and Agenda Broadsheet. A prose work is forthcoming in Chroma in early 2010, and Alex also writes literary criticism.

After many years in business as a project manager in IT, Brenda Read-Brown opted in 2001 for the secure world of literature. Starting out as a performance poet, she soon became involved in community writing, and has worked with people of all types and ages – literally from 1 to 101. Currently, she is Writer in Residence at HMP Shrewsbury and the Oncology Unit at Cheltenham Hospital, and works with adult literacy and ESOL students for Ledbury Poetry Festival, of which she is also a trustee. She is co-ordinator of Poetry on Loan, and works for The Reading Agency, managing projects to encourage young people to use libraries. She is still a slam poet, and has recently had a play accepted for publication.

Dave Reeves is a writer, performer and publisher. His work with communities includes being the first writer to be attached to a doctor working in General Practice (Withymoor Village); the annual Brummies All Write series of books throughout the 1990s; Passion for Landscape, as lead artist to a 7 person multidisciplinary team in Craven Arms, Shropshire for South Shropshire AONB office; the cd/cd-rom/website www.bomereheathballads.co.uk which resulted from a residency with the parish of Bomere Heath near Shrewsbury; 13 years as editor/publisher of Raw Edge Magazine; and lately as a director and programmer of www.radiowildfire.com. Radio Wildfire is a spoken word radio station that streams content 24 hours a day over the internet. The present schedule is set to expand in early 2010 with a more diverse programming stream coming online. He has also been attached writer to various arts centres and library services across the West Midlands; and Literature Development Officer to Sandwell Libraries, where he was instrumental in the setting up of the Spouting Forth readings, introduced the publishing of original writing to the libraries intranet, and published the Sandwell TextMap, an early web-based literary map.  He has also been responsible for numerous books, pamphlets and exhibitions of text.  He is also a blues musician.

Ros Robins started her career as a performer before running a Community Arts Centre in Bristol.  She then worked as a Theatre Administrator for a number of years, firstly at the Liverpool Everyman (her home theatre!) and more recently at the Birmingham Rep where she also managed a major refurbishment of the Theatre.  Ros joined the Arts Council in 2001 initially as Director of Management Services and more recently as Director of Arts, responsible for supporting arts development in the region.  Ros has recently been appointed as the new Regional Director as part of the re-structure of the Arts Council and will take up her new position in April 2010.

Tim Stimpson became aware of the MPhil in Playwriting Studies at Birmingham University while studying for an English and Drama degree at the same institution. He went on to take the course himself, completing it in 2003. Shortly afterwards he joined BBC Radio 4’s The Archers as their youngest ever writer and has been a member of the team ever since. Tim is also Associate Artistic Director for Net Curtains Theatre Company who have produced three of his plays: Skyscraping (Soho Theatre, Southwark Playhouse); One, Nineteen (Arcola Theatre, New Wolsey Studio Ipswich); and First Impressions  (Theatre Royal Margate). For television Tim has written episodes of the medical drama Doctors on BBC1.

Tony Taylor has worked as a Chartered Accountant over the last three decades – and for the last 27 years he’s been helping businesses and individuals through the good and bad times of business and the economy. In the last decade, he’s been an ‘Angel Investor’ in a high speed recorder business; The Beermat Entrepreneur (with Mike Southon); the cartoons Henry Egg and Prosthetic Pirates (with Lee Benson, Number 9 the Gallery); a search and employment agency and various Public Sector Providers. He is (unpaid) chairman of Birmingham Business Breakfast Club, which last week had Digby Jones talking to 120 business people. He’s an approachable chap, always willing to give advice and guidance!

Simon Thirsk is Executive Chairman and founder Director of Bloodaxe Books Limited, which celebrated its 30th anniversary last year. Before joining Bloodaxe full-time he worked as a journalist. Simon has lectured in journalism and marketing, was co-ordinator of a Northern children’s medical charity, organised the Durham Literature Festival and, being fluent in Welsh, was chairman of a town development group in Wales. He has an Honours Degree in Philosophy. His TV drama Small Zones about the imprisoned dissident Russian poet Irina Ratushinskaya was broadcast on BBC2 in 1986. His novel Not Quite White is due to be published by Gomer next year.

Peter Leslie Wild is Senior Producer, BBC Radio Drama, based in Birmingham. Work includes the recent Radio 4 Classic Serial version of Robinson Crusoe (adapted by Andy Barrett), the sci-fi serial Project Raphael by Jenny Stephens (Radio 7), five serials featuring Lindsey Davis’s Roman detective Falco adapted by Mary Cutler (Radio 4), Playing With Fire by David Edgar, Breaking the Silence and Blinded by the Sun by Stephen Poliakoff. He has made more than 25 drama-documentaries in collaboration with Rosie Boulton and Sara Conkey. He has chaired the Norman Beaton Fellowship for the last four years, and has twice won the prestigious Prix Marulic (most recently in 2007). Peter has also directed extensively in the theatre, including the spectacular staging of Alex Jones’s The Worcester Pilgrim in Worcester Cathedral in 2006. Most recently he has made The Contingency Plan by Steve Waters (Radio 3, December); Angels in Disguise by Nicola Jones (Radio 7, November); and The Shape of the Table by David Edgar (for Radio 4’s recent 1989 season).