Meet the Authors
Kate Forsyth wrote her first novel at seven, and is now the award-winning & internationally bestselling author of 36 books. Recently voted one of Australia's Favourite 20 Novelists, Kate has a doctorate in fairytale studies and is an accredited master storyteller. Her adult booksinclude
The Wild Girl, the story of the forbidden romance behind the Grimm Brothers’ famous fairy tales, and
Bitter Greens, called ‘the best fairy tale retelling since Angela Carter’. It won the 2015 ALAPrize for Best Historical Fiction and came in at No 27 in Dymocks 2015 list ofAustralia’s Top 101 Books. Kate’s children’s novels include
TheImpossible Quest,
The Puzzle Ring and award-winning
TheGypsy Crown.
Lucy Balmer Hooft studied Modern Languages and Philosophy atOxford. Since then she has worked for the Department for InternationalDevelopment in London, Tbilisi, Beijing and Freetown; for Boris Johnson inLondon and for Her Majesty Queen Rania of Jordan. She now lives with her husband and two young children in the jungle of Gabon.
J.L. Baldock first became interested in agricultural and food production during her BA in Fine Art, where her creative practice explored the tensions between urban and rural life. Since then, she’s worked in the dairy industry, first as a Cheesemaker on a small holding of goats and now as a Cheesemonger in London. Her writing explores themes relating to her immediate experiences, but also the bigger issues currently facing farming and sustainable food production. A firm believer in the ability of fiction to convey the human side of complex political and social situations, The Farmer and the Badger is one of a series of short stories concerning the mechanisms and daily realities at play behind our food and drink. Baldock is a graduate from the Creative & Life Writing Masters at Goldsmiths, and has been published in publications such as The Wrong Quarterly.
Gareth Brierley has worked in theatre for many years with companiessuch as People Show, Manchester Royal Exchange, White Rabbit, Forced Entertainment, Station house Opera and the RSC. As a writer he has written short stories that have been published in afew magazines. Gareth has recently written ‘4 Minute Mile’ for Oxford Playhouse set on the racing track of Roger Bannister's record breaking race. Currently working on a new play How to Be a Hero, his short play Nice People is currently being aired on Sky Arts. He has a TV series called Deadface which has been optioned and is now in development.
Michelle Madsen is a poet and journalist. She has featured on stages in four continents and appeared on the BBC, at the Bowery Poetry Cafe, Latitude, Hay-on-Wye, the Secret Garden Party, Bestival and Glastonbury. She has written for the Guardian, The Evening Standard and the Independent and runs the London arm of Hammer & Tongue, the UK's largest slam poetry organisation. Her debut collection of poetry Alternative Beach Sports was published in 2014 by Burning Eye Books.
Eli Lee is a writer from London. She has a first-class English Literature degree from Oxford, a Masters in Political Theory from UCL and is currently completing her first novel. Her day job is working as a copywriter for major brands and institutions. She has written reviews and essays for publications including Delayed Gratification, the Quietus, the Financial Times and the online literary magazine Minor Literatures, where she is also a fiction editor.
Krishan Coupland is on the Creative Writing PhD programme at the University of East Anglia. His writing has appeared in
Ambit,
Aesthetica,
Litro and
Fractured West. He won the Manchester Fiction Prize in2011, and in his spare time he runs and edits a literary magazine.
What a horrible image! I love how dark fairy tales can be. Disney took removed all of the best bits.
Bravo, I really enjoyed reading this. The forest imagery is very evocative, it felt like reading a cross between Things Fall Apart (Achebe) and Tolkien.