Author: Language learning techniques

María Blanco is a Senior Lecturer in Spanish at the University of Westminster and a language learning strategies specialist. She has more than twenty years of experience teaching Spanish as well as coaching students and training language teachers on language learning strategies. María has a BA (Hons) in Education (Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, Spain), an MA in Modern Languages in Education (University College of London Institute of Education), and she is a certified Neurolanguage Coach® (Efficient Language Coaching). She is the author of How to Learn Spanish: A guide to powerful principles and strategies for successful learning and self-empowerment (Hikari Press, 2021) How to Teach Language Learning Strategies: 4 Simple Steps for Successful Language Learning (Lightwork Press, 2021). María's website is www.mariablancocoaching.com

Illustrator/Author

Deborah Brown has been a portrait and interiors photographer for Vogue, Elle Decoration, the Independent on Sunday, The Sunday Times and The Face. She is the author and illustrator of Love Letters (Hikari Press, 2019) and co-author of Follow that String (Red Fox, 2009). She has a BA in Fine Art (Newcastle University) and an MA in Children’s Book Illustration (Anglian Ruskin University, Cambridge). www.deborahbrown-studio.com

Author: Self-help/Personal Development

Claire de Boursac is a Humanistic Psychotherapist (MBACP), a nature well-being practitioner and a Walk for Health leader. A Londoner, born and bred, she lives and works in the city where nature has been central to her city survival strategy. Through more than 10 years practising as a psychotherapist she has worked with many clients who are overwhelmed and stressed as they wrestle with modern urban life. Following extensive research and further training she began taking her work out into nature with transformative results. She founded www.natureasnurture.com, helping Londoners connect with nature without leaving the city. She regularly offers the Japanese art of forest bathing, bringing it to a new urban audience.

Illustrator

Anita Joice is a self-taught artist with a passion for children’s book illustration. She has worked in academic publishing for many years and lived in Oxford, Beijing and North Carolina. She is a joyful artist who loves to create doorways to other worlds through paintings. She has a BA in Social Anthropology and Study of Religions (SOAS, London). She illustrated Maureen Duffy’s Sadie & the Sea Dogs (Hikari Press, 2021).www.anitajoice.com

Author: Memoir/Spirtuality/Buddhism

Alison Murdoch has catalogued paintings for Sotheby’s, established emergency night shelters for homeless people, turned a London courthouse into a vibrant Buddhist centre, set up a catering service for refugees, and run workshops in Asia, Australasia, Central and North America, and Europe. She is a regular contributor to BBC Radio including: Good Morning Sunday, the Moral Maze, Women’s Hour, Prayer for the Day, Beyond Belief, and the Chris Evans Show. Her writing has been translated into four languages. She once smuggled herself into Tibet in the back of a lorry…

Author: Poetry, Non-fiction, Children’s Books

Nell Regan is a poet, non-fiction writer, translator and children’s author. She has published three poetry collections, Preparing for Spring, Bound for Home (Arlen House) and One Still Thing (Enitharmon Press) and her many awards include a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship and Arts Council Ireland Literature Bursaries. She was a 2011 Fellow at the International Writing Programme, Iowa and a Fulbright Scholar at UC Berkeley. Her biography Helena Molony: A Radical Life, 1883 - 1967 (Arlen House) was an 2017 Irish Independent Book of the Year.

A Gap in the Clouds: A New Translation of the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu with James Hadley was published in 2021 by Dedalus Press while her co- translation of Micheál Mac Liammóir’s Irish language poetry Bláth agus Taibhse: Flower and Ghost is forthcoming in 2025 from Cló Iar Chonnacht. Her debut book for children, Just Jump, will be published by Wonderhouse Books (Delhi) later this year.

www.nellregan.com

Author: Literary Fiction

Born in France of an American mother and a Viennese father, Katri Skala has lived in the United States and across Europe. She has worked as a senior arts administrator, script editor, and literary editor in the field of new writing in Britain and the US for a range of organisations that include Channel Four, BBC, the Manhattan Theatre Club, the Arvon Foundation, the University of East Anglia, and the Writers Centre Norwich. She holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in literature and journalism from Vassar (in the US), Cardiff and the University of East Anglia. She has had published short stories and magazine features. A Perfect Mother is her first novel. She works as a mentor to writers in all genres and at all stages of their writing life.

Illustrator

Gill Smith is a Liverpool-based writer and illustrator. She has worked collaboratively with storytellers, musicians, writers, theatre companies and educational organisations in the exploration of storytelling (Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre, Wild In Art,Unity Theatre, Walk The Plank, The Windows Project, As Creatives, The Reader Organisation and Manchester International Festival). She has a BA in Literature, a BA in Graphic Arts & Illustration, a PGCE and an MA in Children’s Book Illustration from the Cambridge School of Art. She is one of the winners of Walker Books Picture This 2019 competition https://www.wwpbic.com/winners-2019/

Author: Theology

Dr Stefan Gillow Reynolds is Retreat Director at Mount Melleray Abbey, Co Waterford, Ireland. He has a PhD from London University in Christian Spirituality, an MA in History of Christianity and an MA in Inter-Religious Dialogue. He is the author of Living with the Mind of Christ: Mindfulness in Christian Spirituality (Darton, Longman & Todd, 2016). He wrote the online course Roots of Christian Mysticism for the World Community for Christian Meditation. He teaches Christian Meditation in a contemporary context and leads retreats internationally. He also paints icons and writes poetry.

Author: Poetry, Fiction & Essay
Photograph © Annemieke Goldswain-Hein

Gregory Warren Wilson has published six collections of poetry and a book of Fables. His seventh collection is forthcoming (Raphael Press, 2025). Warren Wilson won the Staple First Edition Award in 1996, resulting in the publication of Preserving Lemons (Staple First Edition, 1996). In the same year he also won the Tears in the Fence Pamphlet Competition. His second collection, Hanging Windchimesin a Vacuum was published by Tears in the Fence in 1997. He received an Arts Council Award for his fourth collection The Mercury Fountain (Enitharmon Press, 2008).

He has been commissioned to write sequences of poems for performance with Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals, Walton’s Façade, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, and J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations. His libretto, Through the Mirror: Tales from Childhood, for four vocal soloists and chamber ensemble, was based on this own reworking of five of Aesop’s Fables. It has been performed and broadcast in Denmark and Sweden. His second libretto, Time’s Up King Canute, was performed in the Copenhage Opera Festival, 2023.

He has tutored for the Arvon Foundation and the Poetry School, London, and has run courses on art and poetry at the National Gallery, the Courtauld Institute, and Tate Britain.

His poetry has been set by Sally Beamish, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Paul Honey, Siobhan Lamb and Joseph Phibbs, and has been performed on Radio 4.