Wanda Barford has published five poetry collections with Flambard Press Sweet Wine and Bitter Herbs: Poems on Being a Jew in the Twentieth Century was published in 1996. A Moon at the Door was published in 1999. Losing, Finding was published in 2002. What is the Purpose of Your Visit was published in 2005. Wanted on Voyage was published in 2010.

Michael Banks, born in Chippenham, Wiltshire on 22nd December 1922, was a member of the Royal Marines, noted explorer and author. Banks joined the Royal Marines in 1942, which he remained a member of until his retirement in 1968. In 1952 he joined the North British Greenland Expedition, a British led 2 year expedition which aimed to explore and carry out a range of scientific studies on the North Greenland Icesheet. A senior member of the expedition, Banks led one of the teams which traversed the ice sheet using Weasel tracked military vehicles.

On returning from the expedition Banks wrote and published High Arctic: the Story of the British North Greenland Expedition which cronicled and critiqued the expedition. Banks was also able to undertake further exploration and climbing exploits during, and after, his military career. This included leading an expedition which made the first summit of the Himilayan mountain Rakaposhi, and in 2000 at the age of 77 became the oldest person to successfully climb the Old Man of Hoy.

Josephine Balmer was born in Hampshire in 1959. She studied Classics and Ancient History at University College, London, and has worked as a continuing education lecturer in Classics and Comparative Literature. She is a freelance writer and translator. She has published four books with Bloodaxe: her translation Sappho: Poems and Fragments (1992) and the companion anthology, Classical Women Poets (1996), and her new translation Catullus: Poems of Love and Hate, published in 2004 with Chasing Catullus: poems, translations & transgressions. Her latest collection, The Word for Sorrow, for which she was awarded a Wingate Foundation Scholarship, was published by Salt in 2009. She has written widely on poetry and translation for publications such as the Observer, The Independent on Sunday, The Times Literary Supplement and the New Statesman, and is reviews editor of Modern Poetry in Translation. Chair of the Translators’ Association from 2002 to 2005, she is a present judge of The Times/Stephen Spender Prize for poetry in translation and has recently been awarded a PhD by Publication in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. She lives in Crowborough, East Sussex and in Cornwall.