Anne Rouse was born in Washington DC and grew up in Virginia. After reading History at the University of London, she worked as a nurse and the director of a mental health charity. Since becoming a freelance writer, she has had many residencies, including visiting fellowships in Glasgow and in autumn 2004 in Belfast. She lives in Hastings. Anne Rouse has published four books with Bloodaxe, the collections Sunset Grill (1993) and Timing (1997) – both Poetry Book Society Recommendations – and The School of Night (2004); and The Upshot: New & Selected Poems (2008), which includes a new collection, The Divided (2008), plus a selection from her first three collections. She reads a half-hour selection of poems on Poetry Quartets 9 (British Council/Bloodaxe Books, 2004).

Roy Fisher has published over 30 poetry books, and has been the subject of numerous critical essays and several studies, including The Thing About Roy Fisher: Critical Essays on the Poetry of Roy Fisher, edited by Peter Robinson and John Kerrigan (Liverpool University Press, 2000), and of The Unofficial Roy Fisher, edited by Peter Robinson (Shearsman Books, 2010).

He has published four books with Bloodaxe. The Dow Low Drop: New & Selected Poems (1996) was superseded by his later retrospective, The Long and the Short of It: Poems 1955-2005 (2005), and followed by his most recent collection, Standard Midland (2010), published on his 80th birthday, which was shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award. An expanded edition, The Long and the Short of It: Poems 1955-2010 – including Standard Midland – was published in 2012. His first US Selected Poems, edited by August Kleinzahler, was published by Flood Editions in 2011.

Born in 1930 in Handsworth, Birmingham, he retired as Senior Lecturer in American Studies from Keele University in 1982. He is a freelance writer and jazz musician, and lives in Derbyshire.