One of the great joys of this podcast is getting to work with, and speak to so many talented authors. To continue celebrating and promoting them and their work, check out their bios and links to their socials below.
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Paul Robbie Stoyle (He/Him) – Thirteen Skulls (Season 4, Episode 34)
Paul Robbie Stoyle is a queer plastic taffy living in South Wales, who loves horror, gardening and knitting. He bagged a Mater’s degree in theatre studies from Anglia Ruskin and continued to explore dramatic writing at the Brighton Academy of Creative Training. In 2016, he was awarded an honorary placement within the Brighton Fringe for his first comic horror play ‘A Fraction of the Price’ with the Rialto Theatre. Since then he has worked with various theatre companies across the UK including WriteOn, Thunder Theatre and The Other Room.
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Nolcha Fox (She/Her) – Giska, Anderson, Tomaro and Fox (Season 4, Episode 32)
Nolcha’s poems have been published in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Alien Buddha Zine, Medusa’s Kitchen, and others. Her poetry books are available on Amazon and Dancing Girl Press. Nominee for 2023 Best of The Net. Editor for Open Arts Forum. Accidental interviewer/reviewer. Faker of fake news.
Website: Nolcha Fox Poetry and Flash
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Ken Tomaro (He/Him) – Giska, Anderson, Tomaro and Fox (Season 4, Episode 32)
Ken Tomaro is a writer living in Cleveland Ohio whose work reflects everyday life with depression. His poetry has appeared online and in print. Sometimes blunt, often dark but always grounded in reality. He has 4 full-length collections of poetry, most recently, Potholes and Perogies available on Amazon.
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Corinne Anderson (She/Her) –Giska, Anderson, Tomaro and Fox (Season 4, Episode 32)
Corinne Anderson, a slightly feral human, prefers books to people, enjoys almost black coffee, and a purple pen for editing. When she isn’t writing her own works, she is busy looking to help other authors see their words in print. She is the founder of Sunflowers at Midnight magazine, and the owner of Ink Smith Publishing. Her most recent publications can be found in Aberration Labyrinth, BRAVE Voices Magazine, The Dribble Drabble Review, and Poet’s Choice.
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Grace Giska (She/Her) – Giska, Anderson, Tomaro and Fox (Season 4, Episode 32)
Grace Giska is a full-time adventurer who spends most of her time on a horse, in a cave, or climbing rocks and trees. She’s also a freelance writer who works in a variety of genres. Her work can be found with Ramifications, Ebook Launch, and Malfunction Magazine.
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Niki Hatzidis (She/Her)– A Body Taken and The Heartless Drops (Season 4, Episode 30)
Niki Hatzidis is a resident creator and actor for Infinite Variety Productions. She is a writer and an award-nominated playwright whose work has been produced in New York, Massachusetts, California, and the UK. Niki is a contributing satirical writer for Ladyspike Media and a sketch writer and actor for Dog Show Comedy. Niki just completed a masters degree at Goldsmiths University in Dramaturge and Writing for Performance.
Website: Niki Hatzidis
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Kanwal Preet (She/Her) – A Body Taken and The Heartless Drops (Season 4, Episode 30)
Kanwal Preet teaches Political Science in an under-graduate college in Chandigarh, India. Writing is a passion for Kanwal and she delves into poetry as well as prose. She has written 12 books and is working on a few more. Her poems have been published in various international fora.
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Bethany Dickens Assaf (She/Her)– The Simulation (Season 4, Episode 28)
Bethany Dickens Assaf is a freelance playwright, dramaturg, and theatre artist, and the co-founder of Whiskey Theatre Factory in Orlando, Florida. Almost 100 of her plays have been performed or read across the country including her twisty sci-fi play, The Consciousness, which was performed at 10 fringe festivals across the country and won Best Play at the Tampa Bay Theatre Festival.
Website: Bethany Dickens
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Ceth Isle (He/Him) – Black Star, Taking up Serpents, A Midnight Call (Season 4, Episode 27)
Ceth Isle is a young Filipino literary artist living in Manila, Philippines. With cum laude, he majored in Literature and minored in Language. As a student journalist and independent writer, he has published English and Tagalog poems, fiction, and nonfiction. Internationally, his works have appeared in India, the United States of America, Canada, and Scotland. He also joins writing groups, contests, workshops, and attends seminars. Further, he is a freelance writer providing writing services open to all Filipinos. Now, he plans to invest in graduate studies on creative writing.
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Niles Reddick (He/Him)– Black Star, Taking up Serpents, A Midnight Call (Season 4, Episode 27)
Niles Reddick is author of a novel, three collections, and a novella. His work has been featured in over 500 publications including The Saturday Evening Post, PIF, New Reader, Forth, Citron Review, Right Hand Pointing, Nunum, and Vestal Review. He is a three time Pushcart, a two time Best Micro nominee, and a two time Best of the Net nominee. His newest flash collection If Not for You has recently been released by Big Table Publishing.
Website: https://nilesreddick.com
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Jack Dowd (He/Him) – Black Star, Taking up Serpents, A Midnight Call (Season 4, Episode 27)
Jack Dowd graduated from London South Bank University with a BA Hons in Creative Writing in 2015. After graduating, he had several short stories published, including one story which won first place in the Metamorphose’s Science Fiction Short Story Competition. In 2018, he self-published his novel, Empty Nights. Jack writes micro fiction, flash fiction, short stories, novels and novellas, and also occasionally turns his hand to plays and screenplays. Although he writes in most genres, he generally finds himself penning thrillers, horrors and mysteries.
Website: https://jackdowdswritingblog.com
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Elinora Westfall (She/Her)– Johnstone, Betts and Westfall (Season 4,Episode 26)
Elinora Westfall is a multi-award-winning writer of stage, screen, fiction, poetry, and radio from the east of England. Influenced by David Bowie, Virginia Woolf, and Dusty Springfield, Elinora’s first full-length poetry collection, Life in the Dressing Room of the Theatre, and her collection of short stories, The Art of Almost, are forthcoming with Vine Leaves Press in late 2023 and 2024.
Her novel, Everland was selected for the Penguin and Random House WriteNow Editorial Programme in 2021. Her short films have been selected by Pinewood Studios & Lift-Off Sessions, and her theatre and audio shows have been selected by The British Library and performed at Winterfest on Broadway, where she won the award for Best Monologue. Elinora was also selected as one of the 2022/2023 All Stories alumni.
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Shane Johnstone (He/Him) – Johnstone, Betts and Westfall (Season 4, Episode 26)
Shane Johnstone is a Glaswegian poet, translator and writer. His first novel, ‘The Gods of Frequency’, was published in 2020, and his poetry, prose and translations have been widely published in Scotland.
Website: https://shanejohnstonewrite.com
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Harold Taw (He/Him) – My Polar Summer, an essay by Agatha Lin (Season 4, Episode 25) is a multi-form writer. His debut novel was Adventures of the Karaoke King. His writing has been featured on NPR, in a New York Times bestselling anthology, and in The Seattle Times. Harold co-wrote a musical adaptation of Jane Austen’s final novel Persuasion, which became the highest-grossing show in the 45-year history of Seattle’s Taproot Theatre. He is currently collaborating on a steampunk musical that traverses parallel universes.
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Virginia Betts (She/Her) – Gifted (Season 4, Episode 21) and Johnstone, Betts and Westfall (Season 4,Episode 26)
Virginia Betts is a tutor, writer and actress from Ipswich, Suffolk. She runs Results Tutoring, and specialises in Neurodiverse learning styles, being neurodiverse herself. During the lockdown, she had poems, stories and articles published in literary journals, won prizes / and published a story collection, The Camera Obscure, and Tourist to the Sun, a collection of poetry. She is a regular guest on BBC radio and she is also a professional actor and performer. She formed The Dead Poets Theatre company, has played Kate Bush and she has just played Mary Boleyn and Elizabeth Barton in The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey, by Suzanne Hawkes, with Black and White Productions. She is currently writing her next books.
Website: https://virginiabetts.com
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Matt Hanf (He/Him)– Animals Switching into Servants… Collective Bargaining 101 (Season 4,Episode 20)
Matt Hanf is a nationally and internationally produced playwright from Elk Grove, CA, a small suburb of Walmart. By day he is a high school teacher and uber for three kids, and by night he is Playwright MAN! He would like to thank the director and the cast for breathing life into these words and allowing him to be a part of their vision.
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Martin Anderson (He/Him) – Candlemas (Season 4, Episode 18)
Martin Anderson is retired and lives in the south of Scotland. He is old, but he doesn’t want to be old, and certainly doesn’t want to be dead. Most of all, he doesn’t want to be a tremulous old dementiac, a tattered coat upon a stick, who can barely recollect himself.
He nonetheless finds a beauty in the world that almost breaks his heart: a heart now prone to missed beats, flutters, uneven squeezes of its chambers, a heart that is failing. Water, the cat, football on the television… these are achingly more beautiful for being soon-to-be-lost. The world looks lovelier to him in the light of his leaving it.
This morning, as he writes this, he finds rapture especially in his daughter, Hannah, and his granddaughter, Caia, who are playing in the sprinkler in his garden, shrieking and larking as people should when they meet something as miraculous as water.
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June Gemmell (She/Her)– Hovering (Season 4, Episode 18)
June Gemmell is an editor for Loft Books. Her short stories have been published by Gutter Magazine, Soor Ploom, Loft Books and Razur Cuts magazine. Her flash fiction has featured on Short Story Today podcast. She is soon to be published by the Edinburgh Literary Salon in their 2023 anthology. She is working on a novel which features a Scottish school janitor who wins the lottery, but keeps it a secret, and she has also written a children’s novel.
You can find her on Twitter @june_gemmell
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Birgit Itse (She/Her)– Donmouth (Season 4, Episode 18)
Photo Credit: Anthony Childers
Birgit Itse is a published author, both poetry and prose. As a story architect, she enjoys working on memoirs and how-to business books. As a speaker, she has a unique way of sharing universal stories the same way she writes – being inspirational and a bit thought provoking at the same time. She also does translation work and coaches people who don’t like writing. Her articles, poems and inspirational short stories have been published by the BBC Radio Scotland, numerous international magazines and collections. She writes in two languages: Estonian and English.
Instagram: www.instagram.com/omataoline
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/becominghappybooks
Collection with Leopard Arts: https://www.leopardarts.co.uk/with-feeling/Birgit’s latest story shared with BBC Radio Scotland (1 hr 10 min from the beginning) https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001m3zz
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Marianna Hawk (She/Her)– White Rabbit: A Little Haze Story (Season 4, Episode 17)
Marianna Hawk, is an autistic author based in the UK, who writes stories set in magical worlds, bizarre villages, and everyday locations with secrets behind the walls. Although not taking any classes in writing, she completed her Bachelors with Honours degree in Fine Art, and wrote two novels during her studies. In her free time, she browses the internet and loses hours in a day scrolling through Instagram, sharing memes and posting on her stories. She enjoys binge-watching YouTube, illustrating, fussing her cat and telling dad jokes.
Find out more by following Marianna on Instagram: @marianna.hawk
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Ian Forth (He/Him)– Leaf Relief (Season 4, Episode 16)
Peaking early, Ian won a prize (a certificate and a tin of chocs) for the Cadbury’s Writing Competition in 1965 with a story about a cocoa farmer, an anaconda, and a Scottish terrier. He blames the usual ‘enemies of promise’ for the drought in awards since then. However, since retiring as a university lecturer, he has found time to write a family memoire, several stories for children, and an illustrated book: Cycling in the Canal des Deux Mers 2021-2022. He is currently working on a collection of short stories. Ian lives in France and Wales.
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Phoebe Angeni (She/Her) – Theoretically Theatrical: Phoebe Angeni (Season 4, Episode 12)
Originally from San Francisco, Angeni is an emerging, critically acclaimed theatremaker and poet. Angeni graduated from the University of St Andrews, Scotland, with a BA Honours and dissertation ‘Performing the Divine Feminine: Women, Theatre, and Social Change’. She also completed intensives at RADA in London and at the Stella Adler Studio in New York. Angeni is the creator-performer of five-star Edinburgh Fringe show, Ithaca, and the author of a newly published poetry collection, Longitudes & Latitudes. Recent credits include Assistant Director for The Presidio Theatre’s Panto, Sleeping Beauty, which will be remounted this holiday season.
Find out more at http://www.phoebeangeni.com or on social media @phoebe_angeni
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Dr Susan Mary Ruben (She/Her)– Closer to Midnight (Season 4, Episode 11)
Dr Susan Mary Ruben is a retired NHS Consultant Psychiatrist. Upon retirement, she began to concentrate on creative writing, as well as painting, and cooking for Buddhist retreats. In September 2022, she won the Evening Standard Short Story Competition for her story, ‘Dr Dandruff and Me’. She aims to both be witty and thought-provoking in her writing. She lives in Liverpool with a husband, and a ginger cat.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sue.ruben
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/suerubenart/
You can read Susan’s winning story for the 2022 Evening Standard Stories Competition here:
https://www.stories.standard.co.uk/competition#l-sue-ruben
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Martina Riesz Newberry (She/Her)– Erica September Carrington and Other Poems (Season 4, Episode 10)
Passionate in her love for Los Angeles, Martina currently lives there with her husband, Brian, a Media Creative.
Martina Reisz Newberry is the author of six books of poetry: ‘Glyphs’, ‘Blues for French Roast with Chicory’, ‘Never Completely Awake’, ‘Where It Goes’, ‘Learning By Rote’, and ‘Running Like a Woman with her Hair on Fire: Collected Poems’.