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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.
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 is a Worcester-based poet and author ,with a Doctorate degree in Creative Writing. Her poetry has been published in a number of anthologies, and her debut prose collection, The Women You Were Warned About, was published by Black Pear Press in 2017. Her unconventional speakers are a mix of personal experience and creative licence. A Z-hearted Guide to Heartache (V. Press, 2018) is her debut poetry pamphlet.
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.
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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.
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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, forthcoming with V. Press in 2019.
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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.
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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 six 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 fourth collection, plenty-fish (Nine Arches Press) was shortlisted in the International Rubery Book Awards 2016. Overton Poetry Prize winner 2015, she has several poetry pamphlets. Her poems feature in V. Press's The Vaginellas. Website: www.sarah-james.co.uk.
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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.
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Photo by Reg Nichols |
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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.
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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.
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.
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Photo by Andy Smith |
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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.
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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 designs the covers for V Press poetry 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.
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Self-portrait by Peter Tinkler |
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Photo by Ollie Evans |
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Photo by Geoff Robinson 2020zoom |
Her debut poetry pamphlet, The Girl Who Grew Into a Crocodile, published by V. Press in 2015 has now sold out. A second pamphlet, Somewhere Between Rose and Black was published by V. Press in 2017.
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 .
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