Editorial Board and Contributors
Co-Directors
Hazel Beevers
Hazel Beevers is a creative consultant, writer, editor, photographer and lecturer. She co-runs The Literary Platform, and was managing editor of The Lit Issue 4 and The Tilt. She writes fiction in her increasingly rare spare time, and was named a winner of Spread the Word’s ‘City of Home’ short story competition. She is a mother of two.
Anna Kiernan
Anna is a creative strategist, writer and publisher at The Literary Platform. She’s also co-director of the MA Creativity: Innovation and Business Strategy at the University of Exeter. Previously, Anna was a fiction editor at Simon & Schuster and co-founded the MA Publishing at Kingston University, among other things.
Editorial and Innovation Board
Amenah Abouward
Reporter and Assistant Editor
Amenah is a reporter and assistant editor in her hometown of Cairo, Egypt. She holds a graduate degree in Publishing Studies from Oxford Brookes, and has held editorial and writing positions at multiple Egypt-based publications, such as AUC Press, Mada Masr, and Enterprise News. Amenah hopes to use her experience to help reshape the publishing industry.
Dr. Amy Cutler
Amy is a multi-media artist and Lecturer in Interactive Narrative Design at the University of Exeter, where she leads on the new MA in Interactive Storytelling. Her previous training includes a Geography PhD on radical landscapes and radical publishing and more recently an MA retraining in Information Experience Design. She often works with site-specific and expanded forms, from sound design and AR trails to guerrilla projections, video games, and digital poetry.
Dr David Devanny
Course Leader, Creative Writing, Falmouth University
David is a multi-media artist, writer, and researcher who holds a PhD in Publishing Studies. David co-runs the specialist poetry publishing house The New Fire Tree Press, and makes VR and digital interactive text-works.
Rita Faire
Lecturer in Publishing, University of Stirling
Rita Faire is a Lecturer in Publishing at the University of Stirling. Her current research examines power dynamics and structures in the periphery picturebook publishing environments of Europe – specifically Scotland, Ireland, and Sweden. Rita is a programming advisory board member of Researchers Exploring Inclusive Youth Literature (REIYL) and is a co-founder of the Researcher Activist Network (RAN). She is currently finishing her PhD in Creative Industries at the Scottish Centre of the Book in Edinburgh Napier University.
Alastair Horne
Lecturer in Publishing, University of Stirling
Alastair has been a Lecturer in Publishing at the University of Stirling since 2020. Before that, he spent more than a decade working full-time in publishing, mostly for Cambridge University Press, where he led on company-wide innovation, audience development through social media, and digital projects in primary education, including the BETT Award-winning Race to Learn, developed in collaboration with the Williams Formula One team. His doctoral thesis, undertaken at Bath Spa University and the British Library, explores how smartphones are changing storytelling, and is supported by the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnership scheme.
Dr Amy Lilwall
Programme Leader and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, University of Lincoln
Amy is interested in dystopian fiction and is the author of The Biggerers, a domestic dystopia published by Point Blank in 2018. Amy has written for Lithub, the NAWE magazine and Short Fiction in Theory and Practice. Currently, Amy is a lead contributor to On the Hill, an award-winning podcast about the history of Falmouth cemetery.
Mary Morris
Mary Morris worked as an editor at Bloomsbury Publishing, Gerald Duckworth and Faber & Faber before moving from London to Devon to run Totleigh Barton, Arvon’s writing house in the south west. She is now Artistic Director for Arvon, overseeing the artistic programme across the organisation’s three residential locations and its online offer, Arvon at Home.
April Roach
Journalist and author
April Roach is a journalist and author writing young adult dystopian fiction. Her story The Burn Radius was chosen as runner up for the Commonword Fiction YA Prize 2018, and she is represented by Sara Langham at David Higham Associates.
Pippa Warin
Pippa is Chair of Literature Works, which celebrates stories and creative writing, supporting writers and communities in South West England. Pippa has a wealth of experience in people development, leadership, and management, mainly in the arts, culture, creative industry, social enterprise, and charitable sectors, and also in business planning, managing and leading change, coaching, and mentoring. She started her career facilitating drama and creative writing in Women’s Refuges. She worked for Arts Council England until 2018 leading on strategic partnerships in South West England and nationally on rural policy and university partnerships. She also chairs Wardrobe Theatre in Bristol. She is a business advisor for several creative industry organisations and social enterprises.
Student members
Breeda Bennett-Jones
Student member
Breeda is currently pursuing an MA in Creativity, Innovation & Business Strategy at the University of Exeter. Previously, she was involved in academic research on digital media and public health, where her findings were presented and published internationally. She is passionate about writing, research, and brand strategy.
Sophie Blauth
Student member
Sophie is completing her MA in Publishing at the University of Exeter after gaining her undergraduate degree in Art History & Visual Culture and Classical Studies. Sophie is the current President and Editor-in-Chief for the Diamond Level Chapter of Her Campus Exeter, which publishes daily articles aimed at the female and non-binary population of Exeter students.
Israel Peters
Student member
Israel is the founder of Gemspread, a publishing and technology startup in southwestern Nigeria. He is currently enrolled on the MA Publishing programme at the University of Exeter, where he is learning the art and business of contemporary publishing.
Shuvashish Roy
Student member
Shuvashish is a Chevening scholar with professional experience in digital media and innovation, particularly as Head of Business and Digital Marketing Manager at The Daily Star, the leading English language newspaper in Bangladesh. Shuvashish is an academic researcher at the University of Exeter, specialising in marketing and innovation.
Contributors
Dr. Luke Thompson
Dr. Luke Thompson is a writer, publisher and founding editor of Guillemot Press, a small press for pamphlets of poetry and prose. He is a senior lecturer and course coordinator for the MA Professional Writing at Falmouth University.
Abram Foley
Abram Foley is a lecturer in Literature and the Creative Industries at the University of Exeter. He has recently completed the manuscript of his first book, The Editor Function.
Helen Gilchrist
A writer, editor, journalist, publisher, event producer and general creative head, Helen is co-founding partner of creative content studio, Stranger Collective. She’s set up several award-winning magazines from scratch, written everything from animation scripts to immersive exhibition content, and is currently creating a children’s book about music and memory with her illustrator husband, inspired by his experiences of caring for his father with Alzheimer’s.
Clare Howdle
Clare is co-founder and partner at creative content studio Stranger Collective. She’s worked with words in many guises for over 15 years, helping brands tell their stories, while editing and writing about everything from machine learning to barnacles and back again. Her short fiction has been published in national and international newspapers and journals, and longlisted for the Bath Short Story Award and the Mslexia Short Story Prize (2019). She is currently one of The Word Factory’s 2019 short story apprentices.
Cathy Galvin
Cathy Galvin is a poet and journalist, founder of the Sunday Times Short Story Award and the short story organisation, The Word Factory. Her poetry has been published by independents including the Melos Press, Valley Press and most recently, the Guillemot Press.
Lucky Grace Isingizwe
Lucky Grace Isingizwe’s short story ‘The Weaving of Death’ is part of Redemption Song and Other Stories (the 2018 Caine Prize for African Writing anthology). Her creative non-fiction piece ‘Losing Your Mind’ was published by Centre for African Cultural Excellence as part of Unbreakable Bonds (a 2019 Writivism anthology). She is a recent graduate at Mount Kenya University Rwanda with a BA in Communication and Mass Media. Since June 2017, she’s been working with Huza Press, a publishing house based in Kigali, in content creation and communications.
Ellen Jones
Ellen Jones is a researcher, editor, and literary translator based in Mexico City. She has a BA and an MSt from the University of Oxford, and a PhD from Queen Mary University of London. She is Reviews Editor at Hispanic Research Journal and writes regularly about multilingualism and contemporary Latin American literature, including for publications like the Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement and The Irish Times. Her translation of Bruno Lloret’s Nancy is forthcoming from Giramondo Publishing.
Callie Gardner
Callie Gardner is a poet, tutor and editor of Zarf poetry magazine, based in Glasgow.
Harry Webster
Harry Webster is a freelance feature writer and copywriter, with a special interest in media culture, literature and publishing, and environmental issues. He is a recent graduate of the Professional Writing MA at Falmouth University and is currently working on his first novel.
Phyllida Bluemel
Phyllida is a writer and producer at Stranger Collective, where she’s written words for everyone from Finisterre to Kodak. She particularly likes getting tangled up in the problems of language and exploring visual culture. She’s also an Associate Lecturer in Illustration at Falmouth University and an artist who’s designed and illustrated books for Atlantic Press and Guillemot Press, and exhibited at the Eden Project
C. F. Sherratt
Charlie F. Sherratt is a multidisciplinary ‘oddball’ working as an illustrator, musician and educator. He is interested in work which challenges boundaries of format, and exploring subjective experiences, identities and ethics.
Emma Dai'an Wright
Emma is founder of The Emma Press, an award-winning independent publisher specialising in poetry, short fiction and children’s books. As a BAME-led, feminist, radical organisation, The Emma Press is keen on making poetry, publishing and literature as welcoming and accessible as possible. It’s committed to breaking down traditional elitist and exclusionary structures, through providing opportunities for publication for writers and illustrators, through creating books which reflect as many people’s experiences as possible, and through sharing publishing knowledge.
Jeremy Poynting
Jeremy Poynting is Peepal Tree’s founder and managing editor. He first developed an interest in Caribbean writing as a student almost 50 years ago. In 2014 he was awarded an honorary DLitt by the University of the West Indies (St Augustine). The citation said: “Jeremy Poynting, who for years has been an authority on Caribbean literature and culture, is recognised for his work as editor and director of Peepal Tree Press and his invaluable contributions to Caribbean literature.”
Rob Dickens
Rob Dickens is founder of Psychedelic Press, an independent publisher focusing on psychedelics in history, culture & science.
Sherezade Garcia Rangel
Dr Sherezade Garcia Rangel is a Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Falmouth University. Thanks to a chance meeting with a black cat in a Redruth cemetery, she became interested in how graves tell the stories of those buried there. The podcast explores how engaging with cemeteries can produce creative responses inspired by these stories. Season One focuses on Falmouth Cemetery.