Pauline Stainer is a freelance writer and tutor. After many years in rural Essex and then on the Orkney island of Rousay, she now lives at Hadleigh in Suffolk. Her Bloodaxe titles include The Lady & the Hare: New & Selected Poems (2003), which draws on five previous books, as well as a new collection, A Litany of High Waters, and two later collections, Crossing the Snowline (2008) and Tiger Facing the Mist (2013). Along with The Lady & the Hare, her collections The Honeycomb, Sighting the Slave Ship and The Ice-Pilot Speaks were all Poetry Book Society Recommendations. Her fourth collection The Wound-dresser’s Dream was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award in 1996. Pauline Stainer received a 2009 Cholmondeley award for her poetry.

Michael Standen was a novelist, poet, co-editor of the journal Other Poetry and an organiser of the Colpitts Poetry readings in Durham.

Time's Fly Past is a poetry collection published in 1997. Months and Other Stories is a short story collection which was illustrated by Peter Standen, and published in 1994.