Tess Gallagher was born in Port Angeles, Washington, the daughter of a logger and longshoreman. A poet, essayist, fiction writer and playwright, she has published many books, including four poetry titles in Britain with Bloodaxe: My Black Horse: New & Selected Poems (1995), Portable Kisses (1996), Dear Ghosts, (2007) and Midnight Lantern: New & Selected Poems (2012). She has published two collections of stories, The Lover of Horses (1986) and At the Owl Woman Saloon (1997), and two books of essays, A Concert of Tenses: Essays on Poetry (1986) and Soul Barnacles: Ten More Years with Ray (2000). She co-authored two screenplays with Raymond Carver, and later contributed to the making of the Robert Altman film Short Cuts, based on Carver’s work. She has also written introductions to books such as A New Path to the Waterfall and All of Us by Raymond Carver and Carver Country.

She spends parts of each year in the West of Ireland, near Sligo, where she bought lambs to save them from the butcher and has since begun weaving wall hangings from their fleeces. Her collection of oral stories from Ireland, Barnacle Soup, co-authored with Irish painter and storyteller Josie Gray, was published by Blackstaff Press in 2007.

Judy Gahagan left behind academic psychology to write poetry, fiction and essays and to explore the thinking in archetypal psychology and ecological thought, both of which and her own work as poet have informed the courses she has run for the Poetry School London.

Judy Gahagan's poetry collection Crossing No Man's Land was published by Flambard Press in 1999.

Cynthia Fuller worked freelance in Adult and Higher Education for many years, has taught creative writing for Leeds University and the Open University, and worked as a poetry editor for the magazine Writing Women. She has also edited several anthologies including The Poetry Cure with Julia Darling and North by North-East with Andy Croft. She is Degree Programme Director for the Postgraduate Certificate in Creative Writing at Newcastle University.

Fuller has published 5 poetry collections with Flambard Press including Moving Towards Light in 1992; Instructions for the Desert in 1996; Only a Small Boat in 2001, Jack's Letters Home 1917 - 1918 in 2006 and Background Music in 2009.