Our Authors
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Miriam Halahmy
Miriam Halahmy writes contemporary and historical fiction for children, teens and adults. She has published eight novels and three poetry collections. Miriam has been twice nominated for the Carnegie Medal and shortlisted for regional awards. Her novel, Behind Closed Doors, was the winner of the 2020 Manchester Metropolitan University great student giveaway, "the clear and popular choice." Miriam's novel Hidden was Sunday Times Children's Book of the Week, published in America and adapted for the stage.Other novels have been translated into several languages. Miriam's novel The Emergency Zoo, has been optioned by Red Planet Productions for a TV series. Miriam is a frequent guest both Live and Virtually in schools, colleges, universities, on panels and at literary festivals in the UK and abroad.
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Anna Bowles
Anna grew up in one of the parts of Cheltenham unlikely to feature on postcards. After an unorthodox adolescence that involved more scholarships and boarding-school encounters with princesses than are normally found outside the pages of novels, she took up following the Manic Street Preachers around the country for a hobby (in the Richey days, when they were good, mind) before heading to Oxford to study English, followed by Russian Studies at UCL. She worked variously as a secretary, a magazine assistant, a live TV subtitler, a newspaper sub-editor, and a government media monitor before settling down to edit children’s and YA books at publishers such as Hachette and Egmont. In 2021 she published her first novel, Rapids, which is about a girl with bipolar disorder who has no intention of letting that – or anything else – slow her down.
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Eric Boisset
Eric Boisset is a French award-winning children’s writer. He was born in 1965 and has written several books for children. This is the first English translation of the bestselling le Grimoire D’Arkandias. Packed with humour, excitement, and adventure, fans of Harry Potter will love this book.
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Jacqueline King
Jacqueline is a Channel Islander living in England. She was lucky enough to have a fantastic childhood, full of fun and adventure, and spent much of it out of doors – camping, sailing and skating. Because her father was in the Navy, she moved house and school often, and the best part of every year was returning to Jersey and seeing her grandparents and friends waving from the harbour wall as her family arrived by boat. She read English and American Literature at University and after that worked as a gardener, farmer, secretary and cook until she trained as a teacher. Her best schools were tiny village schools in remote parts of the country, and she wrote about everything she saw and did. Some her poems have been published and she has written articles for newspapers and magazines. She’s also kept a sketchbook all her life. She enjoyed keeping chickens on Exmoor, has had several dogs and cats, loves singing, playing the piano and flute and is now learning the ukelele and the cello. She still loves sailing and hill walking, but her best thing is laughing and singing with friends and family. Favourite treats: doughnuts, strawberries and cherries.
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Judy Morris
Judy Morris is an author with a deeply-rooted passion for young people’s mental health and wellbeing, a passion which is now reflected in her books. A teacher and headteacher for many years, Judy shared her dynamic love of writing by creating poetry, stories and plays especially for her students, pieces that helped them find their own inner voice - and they never knew who wrote them! With specialisms in English, Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) and Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE), Judy’s teaching and writing have always reflected her fundamental concern for the wellbeing and happiness of others. When she is not writing Judy likes to get her boots mucky, walking with her husband in the beautiful Derbyshire Peak District, a wild landscape that inspires her poetry, imagination and restless creative energy. Her love of gardening lets her get even closer to nature, and her garden has become a little haven for nesting birds and a family of squirrels. A keen popular and classical singer with a four-octave range, she enjoys nothing better than being outdoors with a nice cup of tea, singing away to the wildlife!
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Kate Wiseman
Kate describes herself as a late developer. She went to university at the age of 38, achieving a first class degree in English and Creative Writing. She followed that with a Masters in English Literature. She always wanted to write but didn’t manage it until her son left home for university. She then began writing the GANGSTER SCHOOL series of MG adventures that to date have been published in four countries and shortlisted for many literary prizes. Kate loves history, especially of the military variety, and is a licensed mudlark. Her mudlarking bucket list finds are an intact Bellarmine jug, a medieval spur and a coin with the head of Elizabeth I on it. She is currently working on a series of novels based around Victorian mudlarks. Her First World War novel THE RED TUNIC won the Eyelands 2020 prize for unpublished historical fiction. Kate enjoys fantasy and dystopian fiction. She lists Suzanne Collin’s Hunger Games series and Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel, among her all-time favourite novels. ICARUS AND VELVET is her first venture into writing fantasy. She is addicted to ghost stories and cites M R James high among the list of writers who have influenced her.
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Rebecca Zahabi
Rebecca Zahabi is a mixed-race writer (a third British, a third French and a third Iranian, if the mix is of interest to you). She started writing in her home village in France at age 12 - a massive epic where women were knights and men were she-witches which set out to revolutionise feminism. Since, she learnt how to actually write, and has slightly re-jigged her expectations of what she can achieve with a keyboard and a blank page. The plan of taking over the world, however, has not changed. After honing in her craft in a variety of genres - playwriting, short stories, an attempt at Icelandic sagas - she hopes to write novels that can make a difference. She is currently working on more 'political fantasy', an ambitious trilogy blending magic and structural violence.
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Ruth Estevez
Ruth Estevez lives in Manchester where she works as Project Coordinator for The Portico Sadie Massey Awards for Young Readers and Writers, based at The Portico Library. Ruth is also a writer of fiction, with place, identity and voice being at the forefront of her work. Born in Yorkshire, her novels are frequently set here and landscape as well as character are what stand out. A believer that we should be heard as well as seen, she feels voice, in her case, the Northern voice, is important to be found in books. Her novels include a Historical YA tale of smugglers, identity and coming of age, Jiddy Vardy, (ZunTold, 2018) Erosion about a disparate community losing their homes to the sea. (Beaten Track, 2020) and The Monster Belt (UCLan Publishing, September 2021) about belonging, sexual identity and monsters. Jiddy Vardy-High Tide will be published later in 2021 by Beaten Track who are also republishing a coming of age story about a young girl’s desire to work in the perfume world of the 1920’s - Meeting Coty. Ruth has previously worked as a scriptwriter on the Children’s TV series, Bob the Builder and worked in Theatre and TV from Opera North, Harrogate Theatre-in-Education Company, Pitlochry Festival Theatre, to Emmerdale. She has also taught scriptwriting on the Contemporary BA Film and Television Course at Manchester Metropolitan University. When not writing or project coordinating, Ruth is either dancing or indulging in her latest passion, long-distance walking. She occasionally reviews books with a film-set style accompanying image.
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Samuel Pollen
Samuel Pollen is a writer from Cheshire. His first book, The Year I Didn’t Eat, tells the story of Max, a 14-year-old boy living with anorexia. A funny, poignant book about friendship and family, it won Lancashire Book of the Year, and was one of The Telegraph’s and The Guardian’s best children’s books of 2019. Sam lives in Manchester with his wife, dog, and too many hobbies.
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Steve Donohoe
Steve is a beekeeper and for anyone who is interested, his time with honeybees began by chance. He says, ‘I stood awkwardly at a house party that somehow, I'd been persuaded to attend, wringing my hands and trying to dream up something interesting to say to the other guests. I bumped into a similarly introverted chap called Richard, who turned out to be a farmer, and somehow the subject of honeybees came up. I said I would keep bees if I had somewhere to put them and he said that I could use a corner of one of his fields.’ Thus, began a love relationship with the world of the honey bee. Steve writes about the therapeutic effect of keeping bees, and how it helps to keep him sober and maintain good mental health. Today, Steve is an director for Bee Craft, writes a regular blog and is the editor for the Cheshire Bee Keepers magazine. His blog can be found at The Walrus and the Honeybee.
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Zelda Conway
Pat Walsh is an experiential and intuitive counsellor with over forty years’ experience of working in trauma. She is an author and aside from co-authoring The Flying Child has written her own memoir on recovering from cancer. Her background in nursing and occupational therapy taught her that to heal properly, wounds must be deeply cleansed, and purpose and meaning must be established to build any long -lasting recovery. Her ongoing studies in Eastern Philosophy and Medical Qigong have integrated these two approaches to healing, bringing a gentle and profoundly new approach to her therapeutic work.
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Sophie Olson
Sophie Olson is a writer, survivor activist and founder and managing director of The Flying Child: a non-profit, organisation leading conversations about Child Sexual Abuse through survivor-led training, campaigning, and support. Sophie writes poetry, is a prolific blogger and her memoir The Flying Child – A Cautionary Fairy Tale for Adults, has been a best seller to survivors also seeking for a way to tell their story and to therapists and counsellors looking for ways to support the clients they work with.
