Jem Poster originally worked as an archaeologist, and now directs the creative writing diploma at Oxford University's Department for Continuing Education. His other publications include a selection of George Crabbe's poetry, a study of the poetry of the 1930s and articles on modern poetry and fiction. His pamphlet, By Some Other Route, was published by the Mandeville Press in 1993. Brought to Light is his first book-length collection.

Katrina Porteous was born in Aberdeen in 1960, grew up in Co. Durham, and has lived at Beadnell in Northumberland since 1987. She read History at Cambridge and afterwards studied in the USA on a Harkness Fellowship. Her work appeared in Carol Rumens' Bloodaxe anthology New Women Poets in 1990. In 1989 she won a Gregory Award, and in 1993 an Arts Council Bursary. Many of the poems in her first collection, The Lost Music (Bloodaxe Books, 1996), deal with the fishing community of the Northumberland coast. Katrina is actively involved in local history, recording reminiscences of older people in the community. She also writes in Northumbrian dialect, and has recorded her long poem, The Wund an' the Wetter, on CD with piper Chris Ormston (Iron Press, 1999). Her latest poems are published in Turning the Tide, a collection of photographs and paintings recording the regeneration of the black beaches of east Durham (District of Easington, 2001). Her second full-length collection from Bloodaxe, Two Countries, is forthcoming in 2014.

She has been involved in many collaborations with other artists, including public art for Seaham, County Durham with sculptor Michael Johnson, and inscriptions for Easington Colliery Memorial Garden. In 2000 she worked with composer Alistair Anderson on the musical Tam Lin, and collaborated on a film-poem for Poetry International at the Royal Festival Hall. Katrina has many years' experience leading poetry workshops for adults and children. She has been writer-in-residence from Cornwall to the Shetland Islands, as well as in schools in the United States.

Clare Pollard was born in Bolton in 1978 and lives in London. She has published four collections with Bloodaxe: The Heavy-Petting Zoo (1998), which she wrote while still at school, Bedtime (2002), Look, Clare! Look! (2005) and Changeling, which is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her translation Ovid's Heroines is published by Bloodaxe in 2013. Her first play The Weather (Faber, 2004) premièred at the Royal Court Theatre. She works as an editor, broadcaster and teacher. Her documentary for radio, My Male Muse (2007), was a Radio 4 Pick of the Year. She is co-editor, with James Byrne, of the anthology Voice Recognition: 21 poets for the 21st century (Bloodaxe Books, 2009).

The Political and Economic Planning (PEP) was a British policy think tank, formed in 1931.

Pauline Plummer writes poetry and short stories. Her verse novella From Here to Timbuktu, was chosen as a Read Regional by New Writing North for 2012. She has won prizes in various national poetry and short story competitions, including the Ilkley Literature Festival 2012. She was poet laureate of Middlesbrough in 2000 and has collaborated with a painter in an exhibition titled Palaver that travelled the UK in the late 90s. Her short stories have been published in anthologies by Comma Press, Biscuit Publishing, New Writing North, Orbis and The Journal.

She has read her work on BBC Radio 4, Tyne Tees TV, Sierra Leone national TV and for the British Council. She tutors creative writing at Northumbria University and for the Open University, but also works in the community with children, the elderly and refugees. She also works as an editor for Mudfog Press, Teesside. And has published a collection of poems and short prose pieces by schoolchildren and students in Sierra Leone.