Neil Astley is editor of Bloodaxe Books, which he founded in 1978. His books include novels, poetry collections and anthologies, most notably the Bloodaxe Staying Alive trilogy: Staying Alive (2002), Being Alive (2004) and Being Human (2011), which were followed by Essential Poems from the Staying Alive Trilogy (2012).

His other anthologies (all these from Bloodaxe) are Pleased to See Me: 69 very sexy poems (2002), Do Not Go Gentle: poems for funerals (2003), Passionfood: 100 Love Poems (2005/2014), Soul Food: nourishing poems for starved minds [with Pamela Robertson-Pearce] (2007), Earth Shattering: ecopoems (2007), the DVD-book In Person: 30 Poets filmed by Pamela Robertson-Pearce (2008), The World Record: international voices from Southbank Centre's Poetry Parnassus (with Anna Selby, 2012), The Hundred Years' War: modern war poems (2014) and Funny Ha-Ha, Funny Peculiar: a book of strange & comic poems (2014).

He has published two novels, The End of My Tether (Flambard, 2002; Scribner, 2003), which was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award, and The Sheep Who Changed the World (Flambard, 2005). In 2012 Candlestick Press published his selection of Ten Poems About Sheep in its renowned pamphlet series.

He received an Eric Gregory Award for his poetry and was given a D.Litt from Newcastle University for his work with Bloodaxe Books. He lives in Northumberland.

Liz Atkin has exhibited her pencil drawings throughout Europe and America, but formed a particularly close relationship with Newcastle Arts Centre, where she has held numerous solo shows. She has also published poetry through North East publishers Diamond Twig and IRON Press, and through Flarestack Poetry.

Meg Elizabeth Atkins was a member of the Northern Chapter of the Crime Writers' Association.

Cruel as the Grave is a crime novel published in 1998.

Tiffany Atkinson was born in Berlin in 1972 to an army family, and has lived in Wales since moving to Cardiff to take a PhD in Critical Theory. She now lectures in English and Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University.

She won the Cardiff Academi International Poetry Competition in 2001. Her first collection, Kink and Particle (Seren, 2006), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, won the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and was shortlisted for the Glen Dimplex New Writers Award. Catulla et al (Bloodaxe Books, 2011), her second collection, was shortlisted for the Roland Mathias Poetry Award (Wales Book of the Year) in 2012 and was a TLS Book of the Year. Her third collection, So Many Moving Parts, is due from Bloodaxe in 2014.