Bio: Kerry was born in Kingston, Jamaica and came to England in 1965 at the age of ten. She has published many works of non-fiction. Pao is her first work of fiction, which traces one man’s search for a sense of self and place in Jamaica that is also struggling to shape its identity and destiny. Kerry completed an MA in creative writing at Nottingham Trent University. Pao is the first of a trilogy and will be published by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc in June 2011.

Bio: Sarah is currently completing her PhD in Creative Writing at Lancaster University. Her first novel, Game, Set, Love-Match, is available from Siren Books. Sarah works at the University Centre at Blackburn, where she is designing a new Joint Honours degree in Creative Writing, and has had short stories broadcast by the BBC and published in the UK and abroad. An extract from her second novel, The Lemonade Girl, is scheduled to appear in Unthank Books' Unthology in December 2010.

Bio: Patrick Wilmot was born in Jamaica in 1942. A graduate of Yale and Vanderbilt, Dr Wilmot taught Sociology at Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria for eighteen years. In 1988 he was abducted by Nigerian security police and forcibly 'retired' to London. He has published various academic textbooks and articles, short stories and poetry. His first novel was Seeing Double (Cape).

Bio: Having told his teenage sons he could write something ‘better than the rubbish they were reading’, their challenge that he was ‘all mouth and no trousers’ was enough to kick-start Al into action. Two years and too many printer cartridges later, his first young adult novel, ‘The Free Lunch’ is set to prove his point. Al’s keen interest in pro-cycling and previous role as bass player with Chorley’s top salsa combo provide the backdrop to his writing. He is currently working on a sequel to The Free Lunch, the funny story of a teenager’s fight for justice in his home town.

Title: Psyche's Torch
Author: L E Butler

Bio: A former dancer, L.E. Butler has worked in human rights organisations for the past fifteen years. She currently works in a refugee law centre in Lancashire and is a Russian translator. Her first novel, Relief, was published in 2008.

Bio: Clare has worked in Hospice Care and in Forensic Psychiatry as an Occupational Therapist, tried out as a nun, worked in a therapeutic community for children, attempted to set up a teen coffee shop in her local town, worked in prisons in Nicaragua and helped set up a counselling centre for Chechnyan refugees in Russia. She received a degree in Contemporary Applied Arts in 2007; her dissertation looked at political protests made through the medium of ceramics throughout the centuries. Not Quite Eden is a romantic comedy about a teenage girl who, with her friends, plays with fire and wins.

Bio: Sailesh Ramakrishnan is currently Consultant Editor of Eastern Eye, the best-selling and most prominent (South) Asian newspaper in the UK. His first novel, Asian Triangle, was a commissioned work, published by Mantra. He has begun a new work called The Crazed Dance of the Demented Firecracker. Set in London in 2052, it is an improbable, tragi-comedy love story between a delusional nightclub owner and ex-journalist, and a diva married to one of the most powerful (and evil) media barons on earth.