Elaine Whitesides was born in Cullercoats and left to attend the University of Nottingham at 18. She worked as an English teacher in the East Midlands before retiring.

James Knox Whittet’s poems have won the George Crabbe Memorial Award three times and his poetry pamphlet, Seven Poems for Engraved Fishermen (Meniscus, 2004), was shortlisted for the Callum MacDonald Award from the National Library of Scotland.

Susan Wicks has published three books of poetry with Bloodaxe Books: House of Tongues (2011), De-iced (2007), and Night Toad: New & Selected Poems (2003), which included a new collection with selections from three earlier books published by Faber: Singing Underwater, winner of the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival Prize; Open Diagnosis, which was one of the Poetry Society’s New Generation Poets titles; and The Clever Daughter, a Poetry Book Society Choice which was shortlisted for both T.S. Eliot and Forward Prizes. Both House of Tongues and Night Toad are Poetry Book Society Recommendations.

She has also published two novels, The Key (Faber, 1997) and Little Thing (Faber, 1998), a short memoir, Driving My Father (Faber, 1995), and a collection of short fiction, Roll Up for the Arabian Derby (Bluechrome, 2008). Her translation of Valérie Rouzeau’s Cold Spring in Winter (Arc, 2009) won the Scott-Moncrieff Prize for French Translation, and was shortlisted for both the International Griffin Poetry Prize and the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize.

Born and raised in Kent, she lives in Tunbridge Wells, and is currently teaching at Goldsmiths’ College, London.