Rosemary Norman won 2nd prize in the 2007 National Poetry Competition with her poem ‘The Hairdresser from Beirut’. She has published two full collections; Threats & Promises published by IROn Press in 1991 and Italics published by Shoestring Press in 2010.

Stephanie Norgate is a playwright and poet. She lives in Sussex with her husband and two children, and runs the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Chichester. Her plays have been produced on the London Fringe and her radio plays broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Fireclay, a Poetry Business prize-winning pamphlet appeared in 1998, followed by a selection of poems in Oxford Poets 2000. Her two collections with Bloodaxe are Hidden River (2008), which was shortlisted for both the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, and The Blue Den (2012). She is currently editing a book of international essays on poetry and voice.

American writer and translater

Born in Guyana, Grace Nichols has lived in Britain since 1977. Her first collection, I is a Long Memoried Woman (1983) won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Her later poetry collections – published by Virago – include The Fat Black Woman’s Poems (1984), Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Woman (1989), Sunris (1996), winner of the Guyana Prize, and Startling the Flying Fish (2006), poems which tell the story of the Caribbean, along with numerous poetry books for younger readers, including Come on into My Tropical Garden (1988), Give Yourself a Hug (1994) and Everybody Got a Gift (2005). She has published two books with Bloodaxe, her latest collection, Picasso, I Want My Face Back (2009), and I Have Crossed an Ocean: Selected Poems (2010), published on the occasion of her 60th birthday. She lives in Sussex with the poet John Agard and their family.