Katrina Porteous was born in Aberdeen in 1960, grew up in Co. Durham, and has lived at Beadnell in Northumberland since 1987. She read History at Cambridge and afterwards studied in the USA on a Harkness Fellowship. Her work appeared in Carol Rumens' Bloodaxe anthology New Women Poets in 1990. In 1989 she won a Gregory Award, and in 1993 an Arts Council Bursary. Many of the poems in her first collection, The Lost Music (Bloodaxe Books, 1996), deal with the fishing community of the Northumberland coast. Katrina is actively involved in local history, recording reminiscences of older people in the community. She also writes in Northumbrian dialect, and has recorded her long poem, The Wund an' the Wetter, on CD with piper Chris Ormston (Iron Press, 1999). Her latest poems are published in Turning the Tide, a collection of photographs and paintings recording the regeneration of the black beaches of east Durham (District of Easington, 2001). Her second full-length collection from Bloodaxe, Two Countries, is forthcoming in 2014.

She has been involved in many collaborations with other artists, including public art for Seaham, County Durham with sculptor Michael Johnson, and inscriptions for Easington Colliery Memorial Garden. In 2000 she worked with composer Alistair Anderson on the musical Tam Lin, and collaborated on a film-poem for Poetry International at the Royal Festival Hall. Katrina has many years' experience leading poetry workshops for adults and children. She has been writer-in-residence from Cornwall to the Shetland Islands, as well as in schools in the United States.

Jem Poster originally worked as an archaeologist, and now directs the creative writing diploma at Oxford University's Department for Continuing Education. His other publications include a selection of George Crabbe's poetry, a study of the poetry of the 1930s and articles on modern poetry and fiction. His pamphlet, By Some Other Route, was published by the Mandeville Press in 1993. Brought to Light is his first book-length collection.

Kate Potts was born in 1978 and grew up in London. She worked in music publishing before studying at Goldsmiths’ College, London, and has taught English and Creative Writing at colleges in London for several years. Her pamphlet Whichever Music (tall-lighthouse) was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice in 2008 and was shortlisted for a Michael Marks Award. Her work was featured in the Bloodaxe new poets anthology Voice Recognition in 2009. Pure Hustle (Bloodaxe Books, 2011) is her first book-length collection.

Tom Pow was born in Edinburgh in 1950. Primarily a poet, several of his collections have won awards and three of his poetry collections have been short-listed for Scottish Book of the Year. Most recently, Dear Alice – Narratives of Madness (Salt Publishing) won the poetry category in the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust’s Scottish Book Awards in 2009. He has also written young adult novels, picture books, radio plays and a travel book about Peru. In The Becoming, Selected and New Poems (Polygon) has recently been published (June 2009).

He has held various writing posts, including that of Scottish/Canadian Writing Fellow, based at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, and Virtual Writer in Residence (Scotland’s first) for the Scottish Library Association’s Scottish Writers Project. He was the first ever Writer in Residence at the Edinburgh International Book Festival from 2001 to 2003.

From 2000 to 2009, he worked for the University of Glasgow in Dumfries, latterly as Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and Storytelling.

He is currently Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Glasgow University Dumfries and a part-time lecturer on Lancaster University’s distance learning Masters in Creative Writing.