Professor Adam Roberts, MA (Aberdeen), PhD (Camb): His main research interests are in nineteenth-century literature (particularly poetry), Science Fiction, postmodernism and Creative Writing. He has published widely on the 19th-century, most recently a new edition of Coleridge's Biographia Literaria for Edinburgh University Press, and the monograph Landor's Cleanness (Oxford University Press, 2015). He also works on Science Fiction and Fantasy, both critically and creatively, and is the author of The Palgrave History of Science Fiction (Palgrave, 2006) and The Riddles of The Hobbit (Palgrave, 2014). He is the author of 15 novels, all SF. The most recent are: Jack Glass (Gollancz, 2012), which won the BSFA and John W Campbell Awards for best novel; Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea (Gollancz, 2014; with Mahendra Singh) and Bête (Gollancz, 2014). His short stories have been collected in Adam Robots(Gollancz, 2013) and his most recent SF-themed essays and reviews in Sibilant Fricative (Newcon, 2014).
Dr. Douglas Cowie, BA (Colgate University, New York) MA, PHD (University of East Anglia), is primarily a fiction writer. He is the author of two novels, Owen Noone and the Marauder (Canongate, 2005) and Noon in Paris, Eight in Chicago (Myriad Editions, 2016), and two novellas, Sing for Life: Tin Pan Alley (Black Hill Press, 2013) and Sing for Life: Away, You Rolling River (Black Hill Press, 2014). His main literary interests are American poetry and fiction of the 20th Century, in particular the work of Nelson Algren, as well as writing about music. He also has an interest in the history of Germany, in particular the history of the German Democratic Republic.
Professor Ben Markovits, BA (Yale), MPhil (Oxford) has published five novels, The Syme Papers (Faber, 2004), Either Side of Winter (Faber, 2005), Imposture (Faber, 2007), A Quiet Adjustment (Faber, 2008), and Playing Days (Faber, 2010), a novel about the world of minor league basketball. Childish Loves (Faber, 2011), the final novel in his trilogy about Lord Byron (which includes Imposture and A Quiet Adjustment) will be published in August. He was awarded a fellowship to the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Studies in 2009, and won a Pushcart Prize for his short story 'Another, Sad, Bizarre Chapter in Human History'. His most recent novel, about an experimental community in Detroit, You Don’t Have to Live Like This (Faber, 2015), won the James Tait Black Prize for 2016. He was awarded a fellowship to the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Studies in 2009, and won a Pushcart Prize for his short story 'Another, Sad, Bizarre Chapter in Human History'. In 2013, Granta selected him as one of the Best of Young British Novelists. He has published essays, stories, poetry and reviews on subjects ranging from the Romantics to American sports in The Guardian, Granta, The Paris Review, and The New York Times, among other publications.He has published essays, stories, poetry and reviews on subjects ranging from the Romantics to American sports in The Guardian, Granta, Slate, The Paris Review, and The New York Times, among other publications.
Dr Redell Olsen, BA (Camb), MA (Staffs), PhD (London). Poet and academic. Main research and teaching interests are in poetry and poetics, visual traditions in poetry (concrete, film-poems, bookarts, hybrid textual practice, ekphrasis), modernism, feminism and contemporary writing. Her publications include; Film Poems (Les Figues, 2014); which collects the poems for her films and performances from 2007–2012. Other books include: 'Punk Faun: a bar rock pastel' (Subpress, 2012), 'Secure Portable Space' (Reality Street, 2004), 'Book of the Fur' (rem press, 2000), and, in collaboration with the bookartist Susan Johanknecht, 'Here Are My Instructions' (Gefn, 2004). She has published articles on the poets Abigail Child, Susan Howe and Frank O'Hara. From 2006-2010 she was editor of (http://www.how2journal.com) which publishes innovative writing by women. Her poetry and poetics are featured in Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets, (Shearsman, 2010), I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (Les Figues, 2011) and Trenchart Monographs: Hurry Up Please Its Time (Les Figues, 2015). In 2013-14 she was the Judith E. Wilson visiting fellow in poetry at the University of Cambridge. She was director of the department’s Poetics Research Centre. http://redellolsen.co.uk and http://filmpoems.wordpress.com/
Dr. Nikita Lalwani has published two novels, Gifted (Viking, 2007) and The Village (Viking 2012). Gifted won the Desmond Elliot Prize for Fiction, was shortlisted for the Costa prize, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year and long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. The BBC Radio 4 dramatised adaptation of Gifted won a Mental Health Media Award and the Italian translation won an Eduardo Kihlgren prize. The Village was a winner of the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize.
She has published essays, journalism and reviews on subjects including giftedness, asylum/immigration, creativity, penal reform, HIV/AIDS, documentary journalism, surveillance and Indian cinema in The Guardian (UK), The New Statesman (UK) and The Times (UK), AIDS SUTRA (an anthology of essays published by Random House) and Bookslam Vol. III among other publications.
In 2012 she was a judge of the books section of the Orwell Prize for political writing. She has appeared on BBC’s Hard Talk and ITV’s politics show The Agenda and is a trustee of human rights organisations LIBERTY. She is a member of the Folio Academy and has contributed to live discussions and panels for the Folio Sessions, the Royal Literary Fund and English PEN at the British Library, as well as performing at literary festivals in the UK and internationally.
In 2016 she interviewed Zadie Smith for the London Review of Books launch of Swing Time, a live event that garnered over ten thousand views on Facebook Live, and she also conducted a live masterclass with comedian Stephen Merchant, co-creator of iconic comedy dramas 'The Office' and 'Extras'. In 2017 she appeared in the flagship BBC 2 documentary 'Seven Days of Summer', discussing the partition of India in 1947.