Bob Beagrie (PhD) lives in Middlesbrough and has published fourteen collections of poetry, most recently: Romanceros (Drunk Muse Press 2024), Kō (Black Light Engine Room Press’ 2023), Eftwyrd (Smokestack Books 2023), The Last Almanac (Yaffle Press 2023), and When We Wake We Think We’re Whalers from Eden (Stairwell Books 2021).

His work has appeared in numerous international anthologies, journals and magazines and has been translated into Finnish, Urdu, Swedish, Dutch, Spanish, Estonian, Tamil, Gaelic and Karelian.

He has performed at venues and festivals across the U.K. and Europe, often collaborating with musicians and is a founder member of the experimental spoken word and sound collective 'Project Lono'.

Amy Lord is a writer from Middlesbrough. A new edition of her Northern Writers' Award winning dystopian novel, The Disappeared, was published in May 2024.

She was a runner up in the Mslexia Short Story Award and Dinesh Allirajah Prize for Short Fiction with her speculative stories about Teesside.

Her short fiction has been published by Reflex Fiction, The London Reader and Palm-Sized Press, and her work has received funding from Arts Council England and the Society of Authors.

Mim Skinner is a writer and social enterprise founder living in County Durham. She's published two books, Jailbirds/The Prison Teacher (2019) and Living Together (2022). Jailbirds was one of Stylist's top 20 paperbacks for 2020 and was optioned by BBC Studios for a drama series.

She has also written for The Guardian, The Sunday Times Style, Elle Magazine, The I Paper, Huffington Post, RED and New Writing North. In 2019, Mim won a place on Elle Magazine's list of 50 Gamechangers of Now for her writing and campaign work.

REfUSE, the multi-award winning social enterprise she co-founded in 2015, works to prevent food waste through grass roots community action and education.