Tiffany Murray
Tiffany’s novels Diamond Star Halo and Happy Accidents were shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize. Her latest novel, Sugar Hall, was one of David Mitchell’s ‘6 Favourite Ghost Stories’. Her fourth book, The Girl Who Talked to Birds, is set in Iceland. Tiffany was a Senior Lecturer for 12 years and is now a Hay Festival fiction fellow and Director of Hay’s Writers at Work teaching program.
Mandy Coe
Mandy Coe is an award winning poet and artist. She has published six books including thee collections of poetry for adults and one for children. Her work has been featured on BBC television and radio and she reads at literature events across the UK. As a freelance writer, Mandy works alongside community groups and inner-city schools. Her guide to the work of writers in schools (Our thoughts are bees, co-written with Jean Sprackland) is described as ‘inspiring, enlightening and far-reaching’ (Andrew Motion). Mandy Coe’s first collection Pinning the Tail on the Donkey was short-listed for the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival Prize. Her poetry for children is anthologized by Hodder Wayland, Oxford University Press and Bloomsbury. Mandy is a Hawthornden Fellow
Chris Wakling
Novelist, Non-fiction writer
Christopher Wakling has published six acclaimed novels. They include What I Did (John Murray), which tells the story of a social-services investigation from the point of view of the six-year-old boy at its heart; The Devil’s Mask (Faber), an historical crime novel set in the aftermath of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade; and On Cape Three Points (Picador), which concerns a young lawyer whose attempts to cover up a mistake he makes at work have disastrous consequences. His books have been translated widely and published in America.
Before he began writing full-time in 2001, Christopher worked as a litigator for a city law firm, and before he trained as a lawyer he worked as a farm hand. He studied English literature at Oxford University and University College, London. As well as his work as an RLF Fellow, Christopher is a frequent contributor of travel journalism to the Independent. He has written on destinations including Puerto Rico, Wisconsin and Morocco, New Zealand, the Gambia and… the Isle of Wight. In the past decade he has taught creative writing in many different contexts, including literary festivals, Bristol University and the Arvon Foundation, for whom he has led more than 50 week-long residential courses. He is now the lead tutor and creative consultant at Curtis Brown Creative, the writing school run by the London literary agency, Curtis Brown. Christopher is currently writing his most audacious work of fiction to date, a novel about a good banker