2023 Authors

  Dr Janina Ramirez is  the presenter of the BBC's Raiders of the Lost Past, a Sunday Times best-selling author of ‘Femina’, cultural historian, broadcaster, and Oxford academic. She has published widely on medieval art and literature, and has taught and researched across a broad chronological sweep, covering everything from the sculptures of antiquity to post-modern architecture.

 Dan Jackson, PhD, was born in North Shields and brought up in Northumberland and is a graduate of the universities of Northumbria and Liverpool. His book ‘The Northumbrians‘ was published in 2019 to critical acclaim.  

  Ann Cleeves, OBE, is a British crime writer. Her books bring to life the characters of Vera Stanhope, Jimmy Perez, and Matthew Venn, all which have been adapted into TV shows. In 2006 she won the CWADiamond Dagger award for her novel Raven Black, the first novel in the Jimmy Perez series. She has written 35 books and sold over 8 million copies worldwide. Her latest Vera novel is ‘The Rising Tide’, set in Northumberland where Ann lives.

  Mim Skinner is a writer and social entrepreneur living in County Durham. She is the co-founder of REfUSE, an organisation which intercepts and redistributes food that would go to landfill. Her debut non-fiction book Jailbirds won her a place on The Elle List’s 2019’s ‘game changers of now’. 

 Liz Allard has been producing short stories for Radio 4 for twenty years, working on Book of the Week and Book at Bedtime, the BBC National Short Story Award and the BBC Young Writers’ Award. 

  LJ Ross is an international bestselling author of atmospheric crime and mystery thrillers, which have sold over 7 million copies worldwide. Her bestselling DCI Ryan series of Northumbrian murder mysteries is the second bestselling series of all time on Amazon. She was born and bred in the region, where she continues to live with her husband and young children. LJ Ross is a longstanding supporter of numerous local charities, as well as running her own philanthropic initiatives, including the new Northern Film Prize in association with Alnwick Storyfest.  

 Claire Venus is a Creative Producer and Mentor.  She is a mother of two and with her husband has made her home under dark skies in Northumberland. She is the author of two creativity and mindfulness journals.   

Caro Giles is a writer based in Northumberland. Her words are inspired by her local landscape, the wide empty beaches and the Cheviot Hills. Her writing has appeared in journals, press and periodicals and she was named BBC Countryfile magazine’s New Nature Writer of the Year in 2021. Her new book, Twelve Moons, is out January 2023 

Michael Booth is the award-winning, best-selling author of seven works of non-fiction, as well as a journalist, broadcaster and speaker. He writes predominantly about travel, food, France, Japan, East Asia and the Nordic region. He is a correspondent for Monocle magazine and contributing editor of Condé Nast Traveller. 

Emma Flint was born and grew up in Newcastle upon Tyne. Since childhood, she has been drawn to true-crime stories, developing an encyclopaedic knowledge of real-life murder cases from the early 20th century. Her first novel, ‘Little Death’s, was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, for the Desmond Elliott Prize, for the CrimeWriters’ Association Gold Dagger Award, and for The Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize. ‘Other Women’ is her second novel, published Feb 23rd. 

Writing as Cass Green, Caroline's debut adult novel The Woman Next Door was a Number 1 e-book bestseller and her second, In A Cottage, In A Wood was a Sunday Times top ten and USA Today bestseller. Sleep Tight, the first of three genre-bending police procedurals, was published by HarperCollins in 2021, followed by The Whisper House, in July 2022.

Jackee Holder is a coach, columnist, creativity expert, creator of The Inner & Outer Nature Self-Discovery card deck which contains 49 nature and tree-inspired journaling questions to amplify your journal writing practice, author of Soul Purpose’, ‘Be Your Own Best Life Coach’, ‘49 Ways to Write Yourself Well’ 

 Emma Whitehall is an author, bookseller and introvert from the North East of England. Her YA debut Clockwork Magpies was longlisted for the Times/Chicken House Children’s Fiction Competition, and was published with Northodox Press in February 2022. Clockwork Magpies was an instant bestseller at the bound, Whitley Bay; the indie bookshop where Emma spends most of her time squealing about new YA releases and surviving on hot chocolates. You can find Emma on Instagram @pensandpizza! 

  RT  HON Baroness Joyce Quin is an academic and politician who served as a  Government minister from 1997 to 2001 and was brought up in Tyneside.  She was appointed to the House of Lords in 2006. Moira Kilkenny worked  in Education for more than thirty years and now chairs the Warkworth  History Society. 

  Thomas Bentley is an assistant director who worked on Dungeons and Dragons:  Honor Among Thieves which was filmed in Alnwick in (2021). 

In the ten years that Thomas has  worked in the industry he has worked his way from runner to a 1st  assistant director on some of the largest film franchises in the world.  His credits include: Rogue One A Star Wars Story (2016), Wonder Woman  (2017 & 2020), Mission Impossible 6 Fallout (2018), and the last  Bond movie No Time to Die (2021).