Kit Fan is a novelist, poet and critic. Diamond Hill, his debut novel about Hong Kong, is published by Dialogue Books/Little, Brown and World Editions in 2021. His second poetry collection, As Slow As Possible, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and one of the Irish Times Poetry Books of the Year. He was shortlisted twice in the Guardian 4th Estate BAME Short Story Prize. He was a winner of a Northern Writers’ Award, The Times Stephen Spender Poetry Translation Prize and POETRY magazine’s Editors Prize of Reviewing. Twitter: @Kit_Fan_ Instagram: kit_fan_
Matt Wesolowski is an author from Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the UK. His debut novel, Six Stories, was published by Orenda Books in the spring of 2016, with follow-up Hydra published in the winter of 2017, Changeling in 2018, Beast in 2019 and Deity in 2020. Six Stories has been optioned by a major Hollywood studio, and the third book in the series, Changeling, was longlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, 2019 Amazon Publishing Readers’ Award for Best Thriller and Best Independent Voice. Beast won the Amazon Publishing Award for Best Independent Voice in 2020. Instagram: MattJWesolowski. Twitter: @ConcreteKraken
Naomi Booth is a fiction writer and academic. She is the author of The Lost Art of Sinking, Sealed and Exit Management, and she was recently named one of The Guardian’s ‘Fresh Voices: Fifty Writers to Read Now’. She is the recipient of a Saboteur Award for Best Novella and her short fiction has been longlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award and the Galley Beggars Short Story Prize. She was commissioned to retell the northern folk tale of the boggart for the Audible Original/Virago anthology Hag; the resulting story, ‘Sour Hall’, has been adapted into an audio drama series. Naomi grew up in West Yorkshire and now lives in York.
Jenna Isherwood lives in Leeds where, among other things, she is co-organiser of the writers’ social night Fictions of Every Kind and a documentary programmer for Leeds International Film Festival. She was selected to be part of the Northern Short Story Festival Academy in 2019 and has published fiction online at Litro, Disclaimer and Long Story, Short. A while ago she studied literature at University of Leeds and Bowling Green State University. Twitter: @JennaIsherwooo
Laura Bui teaches and researches criminology at the University of Manchester. Her writing received a 2017 Northern Writers’ TLC New Fiction Prize from New Writing North.
Désirée Reynolds is a writer, editor and creative writing workshop facilitator living in Sheffield. She started her writing career as a freelance journalist for the Jamaica Gleaner and the Village Voice in South London. She has written film scripts, articles, short stories and flash fiction. Her stories are in various anthologies, both online and in print. Seduce, her first novel, was published by Peepal Tree Press in 2013 to much acclaim. Her fiction is concerned with Black women, internal landscapes, race and being, history, class and the stories in the ordinary. She continues to work as a writer, journalist and broadcaster. You can find her on Twitter: @desreereynolds and Instagram: desiree_reynoldsu2
Robert Williams grew up in Clitheroe, Lancashire. His first novel, Luke and Jon, won a Betty Trask Award. His second novel, How the Trouble Started, was shortlisted for the Portico Prize for fiction. Into the Trees is his latest. His books have been translated into ten languages. Robert has spoken at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the Berlin International Book Festival, among others. He is also a songwriter and his songs have been played on Radio 6 and Radio 2. Twitter: @redwardwilliams
Sara Sherwood grew up in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. Her short story ‘Likes’ was Highly Commended in the 2018 Bridport Prize. She lives in Leeds and is working on her first novel. Twitter: @sarasherwood. Instagram: sarasherwood
Carmen Marcus is an author, poet, creative practitioner and campaigner for untold voices. Her debut novel, How Saints Die, was published with Vintage in 2018, and won New Writing North’s Northern Promise Award and was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize. As a poet she was selected as a BBC Radio 3 Verb New Voice, and her poetry has been commissioned by BBC Radio, the Royal Festival Hall, Durham Book Festival and New Writing North. With support from Arts Council England she has pioneered a form of co-creative storytelling and created a route map for working-class writers with funding from the Booksellers’ Association. She regularly teaches online workshops on creative writing which you can read more about at carmenmarcus.co.uk. She is currently planning a new project to support emerging writers and working on her second novel. You can find out more about her and her work by following @kalamene
Crista Ermiya’s first collection of short stories, The Weather in Kansas (Red Squirrel Press, 2015), was chosen as a New Writing North ‘Read Regional’ book and included in Best British Short Stories 2016 (Salt). She was a winner of the Decibel Penguin Short Story Prize (New Voices from a Diverse Culture, Vol. 1, Penguin 2006) and was one of the short story writers featured in The Book of Newcastle (2020), part of Comma Press’s ‘Reading the City’ series. Originally from London, of Filipino and Turkish-Cypriot parentage, Crista lives in Newcastle-upon-Tyne with her husband and son. Instagram: dayofthedodo
J. A. Mensah is a writer of prose and theatre. Her plays have focused on human rights narratives and the testimonies of survivors. Her short stories have been published in various collections, and her debut novel, Castles from Cobwebs, won the inaugural NorthBound Book Award.
Lara Williams is a writer based in Manchester. Her novel, Supper Club, was published in Spring 2019 by Hamish Hamilton (UK) and Putnam & Sons (US). It won The Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize and has been translated into six languages. Her debut short story collection, Treats, was published by Freight Books in 2016 and in the US by Flatiron in 2017 under the title A Selfie as Big as the Ritz. The collection was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize and longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. A new novel is forthcoming in 2022.
Tricia Cresswell’s professional background is in public health medicine and the writing of scientific papers and formal reports. As a dedicated reader of fiction, and aspiring writer, she completed the MA in Creative Writing at Newcastle in 2017. Her first novel won the Mslexia Novel Competition in 2020 and will be published in hardback in March 2022. Her work reflects her concerns about social justice, women’s reproductive rights and the ethical complexities we all face. Creative response to the climate emergency has now taken priority in her writing, though, like everything, this has been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rebecca Hill lives and works in Sheffield, where she received her MA in Writing from Sheffield Hallam University in 2016. Her work has previously appeared in Matter, and in 2020 she received a commendation in the Hive South Yorkshire Young Writers competition. She is currently working on a Ph.D. application.
Sharon Telfer grew up on Teesside and now lives in East Yorkshire, where she works as a freelance editor. In 2018, she was awarded the New Writing North/Word Factory Short Story Apprenticeship. ‘7.43’ began life during that apprenticeship, under the wise and generous mentoring of Jenn Ashworth; Sharon would like to thank Jenn and all who made this happen. In 2020, Sharon placed second in the Bath Short Story Award and also won the Bath Flash Fiction Award for the second time. Her flash fiction collection, The Map Waits, is published in 2021 by Reflex Press. Twitter: @sharontelfer. Instagram: sharontelferwriter
Sammy Wright is vice principal of a large secondary school in Sunderland. He sits on the Social Mobility Commission, and is the lead for Schools and HE. His stories have been published in a variety of places, by Galley Beggar, Tangent and Tartaruga among others, as well as winning the Tom Gallon Trust Award and being longlisted for the Sunday Times Short Story Award. In 2020 he won the Northern Book Prize with his first novel, Fit, due to be published in October 2021 by And Other Stories. Twitter: @SamuelWright78
Tawseef Khan is a qualified solicitor specialising in immigration and asylum law and a human rights activist with over ten years of experience working on refugee and Muslim issues. In 2016 he obtained a doctoral degree from the University of Liverpool, w
here his thesis explored the fairness of the British asylum system. He was a recipient of a Northern Writers Award in 2017 and an Arts Council grant to develop a novel about life as an immigration solicitor. In March 2021, he published his first non-fiction book, The Muslim Problem: Why We’re Wrong About Islam and Why It Matters. Twitter/Instagram: @itsmetawseef
Jane Claire Bradley (janeclairebradley.com) is a queer working-class writer, therapist and educator living in Manchester. She is the winner of a Northern Debut Award for her first novel, and has been longlisted for the Mslexia Novel Competition and the Lucy Cavendish Prize for Fiction. Jane is also the founder and director of For Books’ Sake (forbookssake.net), the non-profit dedicated to championing women and non-binary writers. janeclairebradley (Instagram) / @jane_bradley (Twitter)
Adam Farrer is a writer, spoken word performer and the editor of The Real Story, an Arts Council England-funded journal and spoken word event series, specialising in creative non-fiction. He has been a photo lab technician, an illustrator, a ceramicist and a music journalist, but now works at the University of Salford, where he is the Writer in Residence for Peel Park. He is currently working on his first collection of essays, titled God Hates Withernsea. Twitter: @adamjfarrer
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With thanks to the following people (and those who chose to remain anonymous) who backed Test Signal on Kickstarter and made this book possible:
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