![]() |
Photo by Leah Adkins |
ROMALYN ANTE grew up in Batangas, Philippines. At 16, she migrated to the UK, where she now works as a nurse and a psychotherapist. Her work has appeared in a variety of magazines and e-journals in the UK, USA, and South East Asia, including Under the Radar, Cannon’s Mouth, Ink, Sweat, & Tears, Eastlit Literary Magazine and Anak Sastra. She has prize-winning poems in The Yellow Book (Rethink your Mind, 2015) and was commended in the ‘Poetry’ category of Creative Future Literary Awards in 2016. A Jerwood/Arvon mentee 2017-2018, she is currently working towards a full collection. Rice & Rain is her debut poetry pamphlet.
ELAINE BAKER is a freelance poetry teacher and mentor. She has a passion for inspiring the next generation and works with young writers in secondary schools. Elaine has been Poet-in-Residence at Nomura, London, the National Poetry Library and Vale & Downland Museum, Wantage. Her poetry is widely published in journals and anthologies, including The Emma Press Anthology of Contemporary Gothic Verse, Brittle Star; The North, Envoi, The Interpreter’s House, Proletarian Poetry and Snakeskin. She was a 2017 Mslexia poetry competition finalist and has an MA in Writing Poetry. Winter with Eva (V. Press, 2020) is her debut poetry pamphlet. Website here.
KEREN BANNING grew up singing in bands on the coast at North Tyneside. This led to a BA in Performing Arts, and teaching voice production in both formal and informal settings. She now lives in the Tynedale Valley, working across artistic disciplines as singer, composer, musician, actor, facilitator, wood turner and photographer. Her images appear in a V. Press pamphlet produced in collaboration with poet Alex Reed, entitled These nights at home.
CHARLEY BARNES has poetry published in journals including Picaroon Poetry, Riggwelter Press and Fresh Air Poetry. She has two poetry pamphlets, A Z-hearted Guide to Heartache (V. Press, 2018) and Body Talk (Picaroon Poetry, 2019), one chapbook of prose, Death Is A Terrible House Guest (The Black Light Engine Room Press, 2019) and crime novels including Intention and Copycat (Bloodhound Books, 2019). She is editor of the Dear Reader poetry website, Personal Essays and Creative Non-fiction Editor at Mookychick, and current Director of Sabotage Reviews. Hierarchy of Needs is her poetry pamphlet written collaboratively with Claire Walker.

NATALIE LINH BOLDERSTON studied English at the University of Liverpool, where she won the 2016 Felicia Hemans Prize for Lyrical Poetry and the 2017 Miriam Allott Poetry Prize. She now works as an Editorial Assistant. Her work has been featured in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, L'Éphémère Review, Oxford Poetry, Smoke, and The Tangerine. She is a 2018 Creative Future Literary Award recipient. Her pamphlet The Protection of Ghosts was selected by V. Press Guest Editor Carrie Etter.
![]() |
Photo by Tina Barnes |
HELEN CALCUTT is a globally published poet and critic. Her work features in over 40 journals, and she performs her work internationally. She has taken on writing residences with The National Trust and Loughborough University, where she's also a visiting lecturer in Creative and Professional Writing. Helen’s pamphlet Sudden rainfall was published by experimental publishing house Perdika Press when she was 23. It was shortlisted for the PBS Pamphlet Choice award, and in 2016 became a Waterstones’ best-selling collection. Unable Mother (V. Press, 2018) is her first full-length book of poems.
DAVID CLARKE is Lincolnshire-born but now lives in Gloucestershire. He works as a teacher and researcher. His pamphlet, Gaud (Flarestack), won the Michael Marks Award in 2013. His first full collection of poetry, Arc, was published by Nine Arches Press in 2016 and was longlisted for the Polari First Book Prize. He has taught online for The Poetry School and has published poems in magazines such as Magma, Tears in the Fence and Long Poem Magazine. He reviews poetry, and blogs at http://athingforpoetry.blogspot.co.uk/. His V. Press 2017 poetry pamphlet is Scare Stories.
Photo by Richard Austen |
STEPHEN DANIELS is editor of Amaryllis Poetry and Strange Poetry. His poetry has been widely published, including in The Interpreter’s House, Obsessed With Pipework, Ink Sweat & Tears, And Other Poems, The Lake, Clear Poetry, Picaroon Poetry, The Fat Damsel, Three Drops from a Cauldron, Eunoia Review, Algebra of Owls, The Open Mouse, I am not a silent poet, Nutshells and Nuggets, Richard Jefferies Writers – ’78 Anthology, Domestic Cherry and Ink Sweat & Tears’ 12 Days of Christmas 2016. He was runner-up in the Candlestick Press micropoem competition 2015. His V. Press poetry pamphlet is Tell Mistakes I Love Them. Website: www.stephenkirkdaniels.com. Twitter: @stephendaniels.
JAMES DAVEY grew up in Bristol and currently lectures in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. Before returning to the U.K. in 2014, he spent three years working in Catania, Sicily, as an English-language teacher. His poetry has previously appeared in journals including Poetry Wales, New Welsh Reader, Stand, The Warwick Review, Ambit, New Walk, Agenda, and The Interpreter’s House. How to Parallel Park is his debut poetry pamphlet.
![]() |
Photo by Robbie Elford |
NICHOLA DEANE was born in Bolton in 1973. She was educated at the Universities of St Andrews and Manchester. In 2012, her first pamphlet, My Moriarty, won the Flarestack Poetry Pamphlet Prize, and was a PBS Pamphlet Choice. Her second pamphlet, Trieste (Smith Doorstop, 2015), was a Laureate’s Choice. Her work has appeared in magazines such as Poetry London, Magma, Archipelago, and The Rialto. ‘Yesterday’s Child’ was Highly Commended in the 2014 Forward Prize. Cuckoo is her first collection (V. Press, Oct 2019).
SARAH DOYLE is the Pre-Raphaelite Society’s Poet-in-Residence, and co-author of Dreaming Spheres: Poems of the Solar System (PS Publishing, 2014). Widely published, she was runner-up in the Keats-Shelley Essay Prize 2020 and Poetry Prize 2019, won the Wolverhampton Literature Festival poetry competition and Holland Park Press’s Brexit in Poetry in 2019, and was highly commended in the Forward Prizes 2018. Sarah holds an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway College, London, and is researching a PhD in the poetics of meteorology at Birmingham City University. Her V. Press poetry pamphlet Something so wild and new in this feeling is inspired by Dorothy Wordsworth's journals. Website: sarahdoyle.co.uk.
JOHN DUFFIN is a painter and printmaker based in London. Over a 35-year career he has held over 60 one-man shows of his work and won many awards including ‘Best Printmaker’ award from Sir Peter Blake. His work is in many public and private collections including Museum of London, V&A, Ashmolean Oxford, Fitzwilliam Cambridge and his work was recently added to the Royal Collection of the Queen. He's illustrator for John Dust, a poetry pamphlet with poems by Louise Warren (V. Press, 2019).
![]() |
Photo by Dot & Lucy Photography |
JINNY FISHER was a classical violinist, then a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, now a poet full-time. A member of Wells Fountain Poets, her work's appeared in print and online magazines including The Interpreter’s House, Under the Radar, Domestic Cherry, Tears in the Fence, Prole, The Poetry Shed, Strange Poetry, Amaryllis and Ink, Sweat & Tears. Commended in national competitions, she was runner-up in The Interpreter’s House Competition 2016. She's committed to bringing poetry to a wider audience and takes her Poetry Pram to music festivals for one-to-one readings. Her pamphlet The Escapologist was selected by V. Press Guest Editor Mary-Jane Holmes. Twitter: @MsJinnifer.
![]() |
Photo by Lee Allen |
IAN GLASS grew up in Northumberland and lives in Worcestershire where he has read, written and occasionally performed poetry since the departure of his wife and her death five years later. He trained as an engineer and works as a computer programmer, but prefers writing. His poems use everyday objects and events to explore feelings of loss, despair, recovery and hope. About Leaving is his first pamphlet.
CHLOE HANKS is an experimental and ambitious writer originally from the Cotswolds, currently based in Worcester. Having dabbled in songwriting and live performance, she found an innovative place to write within the poetry genre. Inspired by themes such as witchcraft, spirituality and identity, her poetry explores the latter by removing its contextual constraints and dissecting the elements which settle us into stereotypes. In 2020 she graduated with a first class degree in English Literature and Creative and Professional Writing from the University of Worcester and was named the V. Press Prize for Poetry 2020 winner. Her debut pamphlet May We All Be Artefacts is forthcoming with V. Press in 2021.
![]() |
Photo by Kevin Thomas |
CHARLIE HILL has been described by Jim Crace as 'a real writer'. He is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, a novella and a handful of poems. His short stories have appeared in a variety of magazines and journals in print and online, and he has been widely anthologised. In 2015, a story was republished by Birmingham's Ikon Gallery to complement their summer exhibition. His 2017 V. Press short fiction pamphlet is Walking Backwards.
JENNY HOPE is a writer, poet and workshop facilitator. She leads the Worcester City Write-On Writing Squad for Writing West Midlands. She also works for the In the Pink Dementia Poetry Project with the Courtyard Theatre, Hereford. Her poetry collection Petrolhead was published in January 2010 by Oversteps Books. She is currently working on her second collection as well as a whole load other things, which keeps life interesting. She is also a woman with a tree-thing and lives in Wildish-Worcestershire. Her website is at www.poetrymaker.co.uk and her poems feature in the V. Press publication The Vaginellas.
SARAH JAMES is a prize-winning poet, fiction writer, journalist, and photographer, with eight poetry titles, two novellas and a poetry-play. Into the Yell (Circaidy Gregory Press, 2010) won third prize in the International Rubery Book Awards 2011. The Magnetic Diaries (Knives Forks And Spoons Press) was highly commended in the Forward Prizes and the poetry-play version toured by Reaction Theatre Makers. Her collection plenty-fish (Nine Arches Press) was shortlisted in the International Rubery Book Awards 2016. Overton Poetry Prize winner 2015 and 2020, she has several poetry pamphlets. Her poems feature in V. Press's The Vaginellas. Website: www.sarah-james.co.uk.
HELEN KAY's poems crop up in various magazines, including: The Morning Star, Stand, The Rialto, Strix and The Fenland Reed. She completed an MA in poetry at MMU, where she won the 2018 Rosamond Prize. She was second in the Leeds Peace Prize (2018) and Welshpool Poetry Competition (2019). She curates a project called Dyslexia Poetry & Imagination which provides a platform for poets and artists with learning differences (Fb page Dyslexia and Poetry). Her debut pamphlet, The Poultry Lover’s Guide to Poetry (Indigo Dreams, 2016), reflects her love of hens. She is a dyslexia tutor. Her V. Press poetry pamphlet is This Lexia & Other Languages.
Photo by Camille Lauder-Mander |
JOHN LAWRENCE lives in Worcestershire, although he was born and bred in the Black Country. He gave up a career in IT Consultancy to gain a Creative Writing BA at the University of Birmingham, where he ‘found’ poetry. A popular poet and performer, he loves writing poems that are entertaining and unsettling, making the reader think, without being wilfully obscure. His work is informed by family, experience, his roots in a Salvation Army household, and ever-present doubts about why we are here. John’s parody The Secret Five and the Stunt Nun Legacy (Matador) is powered by similar imaginative wit. The boy who couldn’t say his name (out March 2019) is his first poetry collection.
S.A. LEAVESLEY runs V. Press and is a prize-winning journalist, fiction writer, poet and photographer. Behind the camera, she is a woman of few words. Her photographic sequence, 'Fragile' was inspired by and created for Nina Lewis' V. Press pamphlet Fragile Houses. (She also works/writes under the name Sarah James.)
![]() |
Photo by Reg Nichols |
![]() |
Photo by Rebecca Noakes Photography |
PAUL MCDONALD is Course Leader for Creative Writing at the University of Wolverhampton. His novels include Surviving Sting (2001), Kiss Me Softly Amy Turtle (2004) and Do I Love You? (2008), with poetry collected in The Right Suggestion (1999), Catch a Falling Tortoise (2007) and An Artist Goes Bananas (2012). His scholarly work includes books on American literature, narratology, and flash fiction. Paul also has research interests in humour, taking pleasure in the fact that Googling ‘the oldest joke in the world’ throws up several hundred pages with his name on. Midnight Laughter is his V. Press flash fiction pamphlet.
DAMHNAIT MONAGHAN was born and raised in Canada but now lives in the U.K. She has had more than thirty flash fiction (and creative non-fiction) pieces published in places like Mslexia, Jellyfish Review, Ellipsis Zine, TSS Publishing, and the 2016 and 2018 National Flash Fiction Day anthologies. She is a member of the Editorial Board for FlashBack Fiction and tweets @Downith (which is also how to pronounce her name). The Neverlands is a pamphlet of interlinked stories.
![]() |
Photo by Phil Punton |
ANTONY OWEN was born in 1973, Coventry, and raised by working class parents. The Nagasaki Elder is his fifth collection of poetry, inspired by growing up in Cold War Britain at the peak of nuclear proliferation and a self-funded trip to Hiroshima in 2015 to hear testimonies of Atomic bomb survivors. Owen’s war poetry and haiku have been translated into Japanese, Mandarin and Dutch. In recognition of his 2015 peace trip to Hiroshima, CND Peace Education (UK) selected Owen as one of their first national patrons, and he won a Peace & Reconciliation award in 2016 for Community Cohesion from his home city of Coventry.
JENNA PLEWES is a widely published and prize-winning poet. A career in psychotherapy and love of the natural world inform her work and she is at her happiest in quiet places, like the sea, mountains and moorlands. Her first full collection, Salt, was published by IDP in 2013 and a second, Pull of the Earth, in 2016. She and her husband live in Worcestershire, with their collie. They have two children and four grandchildren. Her V. Press pamphlet is Against the Pull of Time and a new collection, A Woven Rope, is forthcoming with V. Press in 2021.
MEG POKRASS is the author of six flash fiction collections and is a two-time recipiant of San Francisco's Blue Light Book Award. Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, Wigleaf, and hundreds of magazines. Her work has been widely internationally anthologized including 2 Norton Anthology Readers and The Best Small Fictions. She currently serves as Series Co-Editor of Best Microfiction 2020, Flash Challenge Editor, Mslexia, Founding Editor, New Flash Fiction Review, and Festival Curator, Flash Fiction Festival U.K.. Her new, V. Press, microfiction pamphlet is Alice In Wonderland Syndrome.
SANTINO PRINZI is Co-Director of National Flash Fiction Day in the UK and Senior Editor for New Flash Fiction Review. He's part of the team that organises the UK’s annual Flash Fiction Literary Festival and a flash fiction reviewer. His debut flash fiction collection is Dots and other flashes of perception (The Nottingham Review Press) and he has short stories, flash fiction and prose poetry published/forthcoming in magazines and anthologies including Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, Litro Online, (b)OINK! zine, Stories for Homes Anthology Vol.2, Jellyfish Review, and The Airgonaut. There's Something Macrocosmic About All of This is V. Press's 2018 flash fiction pamphlet.
![]() |
Photo by Andy Smith |
![]() |
![]() |
Photo by Rangzeb Hussain |
JACQUI
ROWE has four published pamphlets, including Ransom Notes. Blink is her first poetry collection. Her poems have appeared widely in magazines such as Tears in the Fence, Bare
Fiction, The Interpreter's House and Poetry Review. She's read her own
poems on Radio 4's Poetry Please. For over ten
years she hosted Poetry Bites at Kitchen Garden Café, Birmingham. Co-editor of award-winning press Flarestack Poets, she's a
sought-after mentor for other poets and Poetry School tutor. She
works extensively as a writer in health/social care settings. In 2013-14 she was Writer in
Residence at Birmingham's Barber Institute of Fine Arts, where she established the creative writing programme. Since 2014 she's
been Poet in Residence with Touring Consortium Theatre Company.
DIANE SIMMONS studied creative writing with The OU. She is a co-director of National Flash Fiction Day and a director of the UK Flash Fiction Festival. She has been a reader for the Bath Short Story Award, an editor for Flash Flood and has judged several flash competitions, including Flash 500 and NFFD Micro. Widely published and anthologised, she has been placed in numerous short story and flash competitions. Finding a Way, her debut flash collection on the theme of grief, was published by Ad Hoc Fiction in February 2019 and was shortlisted in the 2019 Saboteur Awards. An Inheritance, a historical flash fiction novella, came out with V. Press in 2020. Her website is at https://www.dianesimmons.co.uk/.
DIANE SIMMONS studied creative writing with The OU. She is a co-director of National Flash Fiction Day and a director of the UK Flash Fiction Festival. She has been a reader for the Bath Short Story Award, an editor for Flash Flood and has judged several flash competitions, including Flash 500 and NFFD Micro. Widely published and anthologised, she has been placed in numerous short story and flash competitions. Finding a Way, her debut flash collection on the theme of grief, was published by Ad Hoc Fiction in February 2019 and was shortlisted in the 2019 Saboteur Awards. An Inheritance, a historical flash fiction novella, came out with V. Press in 2020. Her website is at https://www.dianesimmons.co.uk/.
![]() |
Photo by Geoff Robinson, 2020zoom Photography |
RUTH STACEY is a writer, artist, librarian and tutor. Her debut collection, Queen, Jewel, Mistress, was published by Eyewear July, 2015 and her pamphlet, Fox Boy, was published by Dancing Girl Press, June 2014. She designed the covers for most V. Press poetry titles from 2013-2020 and was part of the Vaginellas; a collective of female poets re-imagining classic forms of poetry. You can follow her on twitter @MermaidsDrown or www.ruthstacey.com. Her poems feature in the V. Press publication The Vaginellas and her second full collection is I, Ursula (V. Press 2020).
![]() |
Self-portrait by Peter Tinkler |
![]() |
Photo by Ollie Evans |
![]() |
Photo by Geoff Robinson 2020zoom |
![]() |
Photo by Simon Morris |
![]() |
JOHN WHEWAY has poems in New Measure, Stand, Magma, The Warwick Review, Poetry Review, Yellow Nib, Poetry Quarterly, Compass Magazine, South Word, Agenda, and The High Window, in Templar anthologies and in The Echoing Gallery from Redcliffe Press. His flash fiction is in Flash Flood 2017&18, Flash Fiction Festival 1&2 (Ad Hoc Fiction). There is a chapbook, The Green Table of Infinity (Anvil Press), and a novella, Poborden (Faber). He has a Creative Writing MA with distinction from Bath Spa. He is a psychotherapist, married to fellow V Press author Jude Higgins, living near a stone circle. His debut collection A Bluebottle in Late October is forthcoming with V. Press in 2020.
![]() |
Photo by Taylor Shatford |
MARTIN ZARROP is a retired mathematician who wanted certainty but found life more interesting and fulfilling by not getting it. He started writing poetry in 2006 and can’t stop. His pamphlet No Theory of Everything (2015) was one of the winners of the 2014 Cinnamon Press pamphlet competition. His first full collection Moving Pictures was published by Cinnamon Press in October 2016. His V. Press 2019 pamphlet is Making Waves Albert Einstein: Science & Life .
No comments:
Post a comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.