Regular Guests

Jenn Ashworth is particularly fond of writing about herself in third person, as it makes the lies seem a little bit less like lying and a little bit more like a story.

During the day she is a Prison Librarian with a passion for user-centered service and reader development. In the evening she dons her lucky brown cardigan and becomes a misanthropic book-snob. You can find out more here: www.jennashworth.co.uk, read her blog here: jennashworth.blogspot.com or pretend to be her friend here: www.facebook.com

Interview with David Muirhead

The Online Lit Scene

Review of Morvern Callar by Alan Warner

Review of Monster Love by Carol Topolski

Review of Ask the Dust by John Fante

Review of Nail and other stories by Laura Hird

—o—

Emma Darwin

Emma is a novelist and occasional short story writer who keeps finding herself writing historical fiction. Certainly most of the books which meant so much that they re-wired her brain a little were and are that kind of thing: Peter Ackroyd, Rose Tremain, Barry Unsworth, Penelope Lively’s Moon Tiger and Penelope Farmer’s Charlotte Sometimes. She also has a tangential taste for John LeCarré and, at another tangent, for mid-20th century novelists such as Elizabeth Bowen and E. H. Young, as well as their bestseller cousins Georgette Heyer and Dorothy L. Sayers.

Emma’s first novel The Mathematics of Love was published in 2006 by Headline Review and William Morrow, and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers and Goss first novel awards. She has an MPhil in Writing from the University of Glamorgan. Her current novel is almost signed off, but the new one is on hold while she finishes off her PhD in Creative Writing and does a bit of teaching at Goldsmiths’ College in London.

Emma’s just taken to blogging herself about writing and reading, launching This Itch of Writing in August 2007. Her shiny book-trade face, on the other hand, is on her website at www.emmadarwin.com

—o—

Trilby Kent

Trilby Kent was born in Toronto but grew up all over the map thanks to her peripatetic journalist parents. After completing degrees from Oxford and the LSE, she spent a year working at a London auction house – but soon gave it up to become a freelance journalist and writer.

Her first novel – for children 9-14 – will be published in 2009 (Tundra Books). A “grown-up” novel, set in Ceylon and Flanders in the 1930s, is represented by Greene & Heaton.

She got her first ’scoop’ as deputy editor of Oxford University’s student newspaper, The Cherwell: an interview with Conrad Black. Since then, she has written essays, interviews, reviews and investigative reports for the Canadian national press, a range of literary magazines and news publications in Europe and the U.S. Her short stories have appeared in Mslexia, Litro and The African American Review.

Almost a year since receiving a 1910 Sigwalt letterpress, she has yet to decide where the gauge pins go.

—o—

Ariadne

Ariadne has an MA in children’s literature (Roehampton) and an MA with distinction in writing (Warwick). She writes for children and occasionally also for adults. Her first children’s book was published in 2008, and her third will be published in June 2009.

She reads mainly children’s and YA ficton, and less adult fiction and poetry than she would like to. She is also trying to educate herself by reading non-fiction on a variety of subjects (at the moment she is trying to understand the physics of time travel). A list of favourite authors might include: Alan Garner, Cormac McCarthy, Tove Jansson, T S Eliot, and of course all the great children’s writers she grew up reading.