We’d like to thank our 2025 authors and speakers for their support.
Gwyneth Box
Festival one-to-one sessions (morning)
Award-winning poet, generalist non-fiction writer, and Spanish/ English translator, Gwyneth is also an experienced copywriter and a Kobo best-selling children’s author under the pen name David Aston. She has several decades of experience in supporting other writers through workshops and writing groups, and has been a regular open mic host and participant. She led the Poetry Society Stanza in Madrid for many years and recently set up the Global Online Stanza. As joint owner of Tantamount creative agency, she provides author mentoring services, publishing support and poetry critique.
Find out more about Gwyneth on her website gwynethbox.com
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• Book one-to-one with Gwyneth
Price: £70, which includes full access to all the Main Hall activities.
NB: If you would like to book a workshop as well as a one-to-one, please get in touch by email for an all-inclusive Festival Day Package at £90 (this includes the Main Hall, one workshop and one expert one-to-one session).
Kay Brophy
Festival workshop: Finding Your Way Through Emotions
Kay Brophy is the Founder/Director of Lifeland Learning Ltd, she has worked therapeutically with children and families in educational and NHS settings for over 25 years and is passionate about childhood mental health.
She is author of the Finding Your Way children’s picture book series, published by Splendid Publications. Her aim is to help educate children of all ages, using fun characters and stories, about the six human core emotions of sadness, fear, happiness, anger, disgust, and surprise. Lifeland is the map at the front of each book which connects the six emotions to help children visualise and navigate the world where the characters live. Her books and accompanying resources are now used in homes and schools across the UK and have been proven to help children have conversations and explore emotions in a safe and healthy way.
Kay currently works for the NHS within the specialist children’s community eating disorder team (CEDS) and is a member of the British Psychological Society and the Association for Family Therapy.
Website: https://www.lifeland.co.uk
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• Book the Children's Writing Workshop £32 (includes access to main Festival)
Pauline Crame
September 18th guest speaker
Pauline is a local author and has been writing since she was a child. Her first book, The Affairs of Gods and Men is semi-autobiographical, it was self-published, and in 2012 was shortlisted for the Luke Bitmead Bursary.
Pauline has a particular interest in social injustice and societies different to her own. She has travelled extensively and the characters and places she has encountered have influenced much of her writing.
Pauline also has a keen interest in how cultural mores, personal experience, and individual wants and desires, shape behaviour. These interests inspired the writing of her second novel, Song In the Key of Madeleine, which was shortlisted for the Yeovil Prize in 2013 and published by the Book Guild in 2021.
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Pauline is one of our guests, along with Helen Leibling and Caroline Mills on September 18th at 1, Mill Street.
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Sarah Jane Downing
June 12th guest speaker
Sarah Jane Downing is an author and freelance journalist with a particular passion for the history of fashion and beauty. Great events are fascinating for how they have shaped the path of history, but she prefers to take the intimate view from a closet or a dressing table to explore the feminine perspective of those events and the impact they had on individual lives.
Fascinated with the interplay of fashion, culture and personality, Sarah Jane has written widely about the arts, contributing to Selvedge since the first issue as well as national and local magazines and newspapers. She has written five books: The English Pleasure Garden 1660-1860, Fashion in the Time of Jane Austen, Beauty and Cosmetics 1550-1950, Fashion in the Time of William Shakespeare, and Pastimes and Pleasures in the Time of Jane Austen, and she is currently working on Beauty and Cosmetics in the Time of Jane Austen.
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Sarah Jane is our guest, along with Dr Adam Sharp on June 12th at 1, Mill Street.
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Jo Durrant
June 12th compère
Jo Durrant is the award-winning presenter of the independent arts & science podcast ‘Jo Durrant’s Beautiful Universe’. She’s a highly respected and accomplished interviewer and event chair, and a familiar face at literature, history, and science festivals. For over 20 years Jo was a presenter, producer & reporter with BBC radio and interviewed hundreds of people, from Melanie C to Tim Peake. She is now freelance.
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​Jo will be compèring an evening of literature and laughs with authors Dr Adam Sharp and Sarah Jane on June 12th at 1, Mill Street.
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Mark Edwards
Festival main hall speaker
Mark Edwards writes psychological thrillers in which scary things happen to ordinary people.
He has sold over 5 million books since his first novel, The Magpies, was published in 2013, and has topped the bestseller lists numerous times. His other novels include Follow You Home, The Retreat and The Psychopath Next Door. His new novel, The Wasp Trap, will be published by Penguin in July 2025.
Originally from Hastings in East Sussex, Mark now lives in Wolverhampton with his wife, their children, two cats and a golden retriever.
• Book a ticket for the main Festival on September 20th (£22)
Ann Evans
Festival one-to-one sessions (afternoon)
Ann Evans is a Coventry-born, award-winning author and freelance writer who began writing as a hobby when her three children were young. That hobby became a career and a way of life.
Ann writes books for a variety of genres from picture books and non-fiction books to KS2 fiction, YA fiction, books for reluctant readers, as well as adult thrillers and romances (under her pen name of Ann Carroll). A number of these books have won awards. Total number of books published – approx. 48.
Alongside writing fiction, she is also a busy freelance writer, writing for a variety of different magazines on a regular basis. Amongst them: Collector’s Gazette (20 years a regular contributor), Diecast Collector, Dolls House & Miniature World, Dogs Monthly (14 years a regular contributor), The People’s Friend, Warwickshire Life, Classic Military Vehicles, (online) Always Traveller, (online her own webmag) Elementary Whatson, The Coventry Telegraph (Staff Feature Writer 13 years) and many others. Total number of articles published – approx. 2,000.
Ann also runs writing workshops, classes, talks and does school visits.
Discover more on her website: www.annevansbooks.co.uk
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Price: £70, which includes full access to all the Main Hall activities.
NB: If you would like to book a workshop as well as a one-to-one, please get in touch by email for an all-inclusive Festival Day Package at £90 (this includes the Main Hall, one workshop and one expert one-to-one session).
Beth Ferguson
Festival one-to-one sessions (morning)
Originally from Birmingham, Beth graduated from the University of Oxford with a BA and MSt in Theology and Religion. She joined the Kate Nash Literary Agency in 2022 as an Agency Trainee and then Agency Assistant. In just under two years with the agency, Beth represented nine authors across a variety of genres in fiction and non-fiction and assisted a wide array of authors
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Price: £70, which includes full access to all the Main Hall activities.
NB: If you would like to book a workshop as well as a one-to-one, please get in touch by email for an all-inclusive Festival Day Package at £90 (this includes the Main Hall, one workshop and one expert one-to-one session).
Paul Gitsham
Festival workshop: Crafting a Killer Crime novel and one-to-ones (afternoon)
Paul Gitsham started his career as a biologist, working in Manchester and Toronto, before retraining as a science teacher. Along the way he had spells as the world’s most over-qualified receptionist and spent time working for a major UK bank, ensuring that terrorists, foreign dictators and other international ne’er do wells hadn’t embarrassed the institution by managing to deposit their ill-gotten gains in a Children’s Trust Fund.
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Paul is the author of the DCI Warren Jones series. His most recent novel is a standalone domestic thriller, The Aftermath. He is a member of the Crime Writers’ Association and the International Thriller Writers organisation. He lives with his wife in the West Midlands in a house with more books than shelf space.
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• Book the Crime writing workshop £32 (includes access to main Festival)
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NB: If you would like to book a workshop as well as a one-to-one, please get in touch by email for an all-inclusive Festival Day Package at £90 (this includes the Main Hall, one workshop and one expert one-to-one session).
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Janet Gover
Festival main hall speaker
Janet Gover grew up in rural Australia, surrounded by wide open spaces, horses and many books. She now lives behind a computer keyboard in West London, and is slave to a large furry cat.
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Janet writes stories about strong women finding their own way in the world. About families and falling in love. She loves making her readers cry – but in a good way. She loves flawed characters, communities and pretty much every one of her books has horses in it – except for the one with alpacas. And the one with penguins.
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She has written eighteen novels and won The Romantic Book of the Year (Aust), Romantic Novel of the Year (UK) and several USA Romance awards.
Janet is a former Television Journalist, University tutor, and Broadcast technology consultant. She is a specialist in on-line teaching for adults. She teaches at writing retreats and conferences in the UK and abroad, and provides private mentoring for new writers.
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Twitter: @janet_gover
Instagram: @janetgoverauthor
• Book a ticket for the main Festival on September 20th (£22)
Emilie Lauren Jones
Festival workshop - Around the world of poetry
Emilie Lauren Jones was Coventry's first Poet Laureate. Her words have featured on local and national radio and television, including two award-nominated television programmes. As well as performing, writing commissions, and participating in poetry projects, Emilie facilitates workshops for adults and young people. She enjoys visiting schools, care homes, community groups, conferences (and anywhere else!) to share her love of words. She has performed in a variety of venues across the UK and internationally, from libraries and village halls to Alexandra Palace. Her first book of children’s poetry A Poetic A-Z of Awesome Animals was released by Caboodle Books in October 2023.
@EmilieLaurenxx
• Book the poetry workshop £32 (includes access to main Festival)
Helen Liebling
September 18th guest speaker
Helen Liebling has worked in Uganda, Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Liberia, and South Africa. She has numerous journal publications has written four books and has carried out research with South Sudanese refugee survivors of SGBV and torture living in refugee settlements in Uganda. Helen provides consultancies, training and interventions to improve support for survivors of conflict-, sexual-, and gender-based violence and torture in conjunction with African organisations including Women’s International Peace Centre, Kampala, Uganda. She is a member of the Tearfund/SVRI steering group on the role of faith-based organisations in preventing conflict SGBV and a previous member of the Healing in Harmony Advisory Board, which has evaluated the impact on women conflict survivors’ health following participation in a music therapy programme.
Helen was recently interviewed for the Womxn show on Cape Town TV regarding her work with survivors ( see News - Helen Liebling).
Personal website: Helen Liebling
Helen is one of our guests, along with Pauline Crame and Caroline Mills on September 18th at 1, Mill Street
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Michael Loveday
Festival workshop - Flash Fiction
Michael Loveday is a fiction writer, poet, and creative facilitator. He works freelance as a coach and mentor with creative practitioners of all kinds. He also teaches as a Visiting Lecturer at Bath Spa University, and is a resident of The Studio, Bath Spa University’s Enterprise and Innovation Hub.
Michael has spent over twenty years as a fiction writer and poet. He Said/She Said, his debut poetry pamphlet, was published by HappenStance Press in 2011. His first full work of fiction, the hybrid novella-in-flash sequence Three Men on the Edge (V. Press, 2018) was shortlisted for the 2019 Saboteur Best Novella Award. His craft guide to the novella-in-flash form, Unlocking the Novella-in-Flash, was published by Ad Hoc Fiction in spring 2022. This book won an Arts Council England Award, the 2023 Best Indie Book Award for Non-fiction ‘How-To’ books, the 2023 Cadmus Book Award for ‘Non-fiction: Crafting/ Hobbies/How-To’ books, the 2024 Independent Press Award for Writing and Publishing, and was a Finalist or runner-up for four other awards, including the International Book Awards 2023. His fourth publication, a chapbook of short-short stories called Do What the Boss Says: Stories of Family and Childhood, was published in November 2022 by Bamboo Dart Press.
• Book the Flash fiction workshop £32 (includes access to main Festival)
Alison May
Festival main hall speaker & workshop on Romance
Alison May is a novelist, short story writer, and writing mentor, based in Worcester, where she lives with her husband. No kids. No pets. There were goldfish once. That ended badly.
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Alison writes romantic comedies as Amelia Berry and Ally Sinclair and emotion-driven fiction, in collaboration, as Juliet Bell. Her latest book is, A Recipe for Love, writing as Amelia Berry.
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In her non-writing time Alison is a writing tutor, editor and tour guide for the National Trust. You can find out more about her at www.alison-may.co.uk, on Instagram @MsAlisonMay or on youtube – www.youtube.com/@alallyalison
• Book the Romance workshop (includes access to main Festival)
Caroline Mills
June 12th guest speaker
Caroline Mills is an experienced, award-winning travel writer specialising in travel throughout the UK and Europe. Alongside work for inter/national newspapers and magazines, she is the author of, and contributor to, more than a dozen travel books. These include Slow Travel The Cotswolds, now in its third edition, Camping Road Trips France & Germany: 30 adventures with your campervan, motorhome or tent, a collection of literary stories, and its sister title Camping Road Trips UK, winner of British Guild of Travel Writers’ Travel Guide Book of the Year. Her travels have taken her extensively across the globe, often as a solo female traveller experiencing overland ‘wild’ camping adventures in road-less-travelled locations.
Caroline grew up in South Warwickshire, and lives on a farm on the border of Oxfordshire / Warwickshire.
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Caroline is one of our guests, along with Pauline Crame and Helen Leibling on September 18th at 1, Mill Street
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David Muir
Festival workshop - Memoir & Creative non-fiction
David is retired from his University post and spends some of his time writing fiction and poetry. He lives with his wife in Solihull and has been a member of Birmingham-based New Street Authors for ten years, since its inception
• Book the Memoir workshop £32 (includes access to main Festival)
Gabrielle Mullarkey
Festival workshop - Get in to Character
Gabrielle Mullarkey trained as a journalist and has worked for many years in the magazine industry. The author of three published novels, she’s also contributed nearly 2,000 short stories and serials to women’s magazines, alongside travel and opinion pieces. Her work has been recorded for radio and audio download. She has an MSc in creative writing for therapeutic purposes and works as a creative writing tutor for both Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Adult Learning.
@authorgabrielle
• Book the Get into Character workshop £32 (includes access to main Festival)
Festival main hall speaker
Gary Phelps, who writes under the name G J Phelps, is an award-winning journalist who spent 30 years in the news industry, working his way up from junior reporter to eventually edit nine newspapers. A devotee of supernatural fiction since his childhood, Gary drew on real-life stories of hauntings - which he collected during his years in journalism - to inspire his debut novel 13 Doors.
• Book a ticket for the main Festival on September 20th (£22)
Adam Sharp
June 12th guest speaker
As a composer and curator of the best, worst and most nonsensical lists, Adam developed a following of over 90,000 like-minded language enthusiasts on social media (@AdamCSharp on Twitter and Bluesky). This led to a series of books published by Hachette: The Correct Order of Biscuits (2020) and most recently The Wheel is Spinning but the Hamster is Dead (September 2023).
His lists have been featured in the Guardian, Irish Times, Stylist, Good Housekeeping, The Poke, The Bookshelf, The Knowledge, and Harper’s. He has also written multiple features on language for The New European, The Observer, and the Swiss daily paper Neue Zürcher Zeitung (for which he writes a regular column).
Adam is our guest, along with Sarah Jane Downing on June 12th at 1, Mill Street
Siân Smith
Festival main hall speaker and one-to-ones (afternoon)
Siân Smith Editorial was created by Siân to provide editorial services for non-fiction books written by women. Specialising in personal development, health and wellness, Siân’s top priority is ensuring you don’t fear the editing process. Working 1:1 with authors means she can give your book the attention it deserves and step in as your editorial cheerleader when self-doubt creeps in. Siân is determined to reframe self-publishing for independent authors: it doesn’t mean doing it all by yourself, it’s about working together to make your book the best it can be.
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Price: £70, which includes full access to all the Main Hall activities.
NB: If you would like to book a workshop as well as a one-to-one, please get in touch by email for an all-inclusive Festival Day Package at £90 (this includes the Main Hall, one workshop and one expert one-to-one session).
Christina Strang
Festival workshop on graphology & one-to-ones (morning)
Christina Strang is an internationally recognized graphologist specialising in self-development to foster positive change. She focuses on areas like staff retention, recruitment profiling, mergers, and succession planning for both corporates and SMEs. Christina has collaborated with high-profile clients including TATA Steel, MOD, Tyco International, and Liverpool Victoria Insurance.
As a qualified adult education teacher with a background in counselling, Christina is a leading figure in the field of graphology. She has conducted ethically approved medical research, using handwriting analysis as a diagnostic tool, making her one of the few in the world to do so.
Her expertise has been featured globally, with appearances on TV and radio in Australia, China, India, and the UK, and she has been interviewed by international press across Europe including Germany and Poland. Christina has spoken at major conferences, including as a keynote speaker in China in 2015, and was an award winner at an international conference in 2019.
Visit www.ghost-tree.com for more information.
• Book the graphology workshop £32 (includes access to main Festival)
• Book one-to-one with Christina
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Price: £70, which includes full access to all the Main Hall activities.
NB: If you would like to book a workshop as well as a one-to-one, please get in touch by email for an all-inclusive Festival Day Package at £90 (this includes the Main Hall, one workshop and one expert one-to-one session).
Ellie Tilley
Festival main hall speaker
Ellie Tilley lives in the historic town of Rugby surrounded by beautiful countryside. She loves both reading and writing fiction that transports her out of this world and aims to provide similar experiences to her readership with her fantasy fiction novels.
After graduating from Cardiff University with a degree in English Literature, Ellie has pursued her own writing career. Her debut novel, Blackthorn and Beyond - The Sorcerer's Redemption, was released in October 2024 and takes readers down a fairytale path deep into the forest.
Ellie spends her time drinking entirely too much Earl Grey tea and wading through the pages of her next novel, an underwater fantasy romance series.
• Book a ticket for the main Festival on September 20th (£22)
Ananditha Venkatramanan
Festival main hall speaker (WYPL)
I'm Ananditha Venkatramanan and I'm in Year 11 at Rugby High School. Poetry is one of the best things in my life and it’s taken me from being one of the commended poets at the Foyles Young Poets Awards to becoming the Warwickshire Young Poet Laureate! I love Maya Angelou, Taylor Swift, Dave and making ramen. Along with my poetry, I learn and perform music and play badminton. When you listen to my poems, I hope you feel more connected to yourself and the people around you. Thank you so much!
• Book a ticket for the main Festival on September 20th (£22)
Kerry Williams
Festival main hall speaker
Kerry Williams writes romantic fantasy. She graduated from Brunel University with a 2:1(hons) in Creative Writing and is now an author based in the heart of England. Her debut YA romantic fantasy trilogy was originally released in 2023, and is now self published by Williams. Her sophomore duology, The Darkness Duet, was acquired in a two-book deal by Hot Tree Publishing and is set for an early 2025 release.
Copywriter by day, she gets lost in a world of magic at night, either in her writing or in what she reads. Her creative roots were cultivated by the writing of the unforgettable Anne Rice, she also adores the work of Erin Morgenstern, Holly Black, Judy I. Lin, and Rachel Griffin to name a few.
• Book a ticket for the main Festival on September 20th (£22)
Shelley Wilson
Festival one-to-ones (morning)
Shelley Wilson is a writing mentor and multi-genre author of over twenty titles. Her books include self-help, personal development, memoir, children’s, planners, YA fiction, historical fiction, and romance. Shelley began her writing career ten years ago as an independently published author before signing a traditional contract on a ten-book deal. Through her mentoring, she specialises in getting you started on your writing journey and helping you go from idea to first draft and beyond.
• Book one-to-one with Shelley
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Price: £70, which includes full access to all the Main Hall activities.
NB: If you would like to book a workshop as well as a one-to-one, please get in touch by email for an all-inclusive Festival Day Package at £90 (this includes the Main Hall, one workshop and one expert one-to-one session).