Fiona Sampson was first a concert violinist, then studied at the Universities of Oxford, where she won the Newdigate Prize, and Nijmegen, where she received a PhD in the philosophy of language. This research arose from her pioneering residencies in health care. Her latest of her seventeen books is Rough Music, shortlisted for the 2010 Forward and T.S. Eliot Prizes. In 2009 she received a Cholmondeley Award and became an FRSL. She is editor of Poetry Review. She gave the Newcastle/Bloodaxe Poetry Lectures at Newcastle University in 2010, published in 2011 as Music Lessons.

Sylva Fischerová was born in 1963 in Prague. She grew up in the Moravian town of Olomouc as a daughter of non-Marxist philosopher whose works were banished under communist rule. She returned to Prague to study philosophy and physics, and later Greek and Latin, at Charles University where she now teaches ancient Greek literature and philosophy. She has published six volumes of poems in Czech, and her poetry has been translated and published in numerous languages. An earlier selection of her poems, The Tremor of Racehorses, translated by Ian and Jarmila Milner, was published by Bloodaxe in 1990. She recently began to write prose, and a book of her stories Miracle, as well as a book for children, appeared in 2005. The Swing in the Middle of Chaos: Selected Poems, co-translated with Stuart Friebert, is published by Bloodaxe in 2009.

Kitty Fitzgerald is the author of four novels. Pigtopia was shortlisted for the Barnes & Noble Discover Award 2006. Her theatre work has been performed in eight productions for a variety of companies, and she has had four dramas produced by BBC Radio 4.

Fitzgerald won the Notes from the Underground/Latitude Festival Short Story Competition in 2009, has been published by Shortfire Press and was commissioned in 2012 by NWN to write a story for their Platformanthology.

Fitzgerald is also a lecturer in creative writing, had a Hawthornden Fellowship and a Hosking Houses Trust Writing Award.

Flambard was a North East-based independent press which published a range of poetry and fiction, as well as some non-fiction and visual-art books. It was particularly focused on publishing new and neglected writers in the North of England, as well as promoting live literature.

Flambard Press was established in 1990 by Peter and Margaret Lewis. They began using early word processors and desktop publishing at Newcastle University, before securing funding from Northern Arts. In 2000, they were named a Regularly Funded Organisation of the Arts Council to cater for neglected writers of both poetry and prose, particularly of, but not exclusively from the northern region.

Over 20 years they published 129 titles, including several which were shortlisted for major prizes such as the Booker Prize, the T.S. Eliot Prize, and the Whitbread First Novel Award. Flambard Press supported many writers from the North East and Cumbria, as well as publishing authors from across the UK and overseas.

Flambard Press was supported by the Arts Council England until 2012, and officially closed in March 2013.

Professor at Newcastle University's Department of Classics