We had a great December ’18 BookJam – if you missed it, you can listen again here:

THE WRITERS

Jack Blackburn is a performance poet and portrait painter who lives in south London. He has never done much with his life other than fuck around.

https://www.facebook.com/JackBlackburnPaintings/

Mark Bowsher is a proudly dyspraxic writer and filmmaker. He wrote and directed three shorts which won Best Short awards (plus one Best Screenplay award) at festivals in the UK and the US. He has written short fiction for Lionsgate’s Fright Club ezine as well as articles for Den of Geek and Cult TV Times. He recently wrote and directed the pilot episode for a sitcom based on his previous career in film marketing entitled It’s All Lies. He isn’t married and doesn’t live in Surrey but he did once climb a mountain dressed as Peter Pan. @MarkBowsherFilm | unbound.com/books/the-boy-who-stole-time

Jack Dowd’s writing career started at the back of a classroom scribbling stories into his school books. In 2015 he graduated from London South Bank University  with a degree in Creative Writing and on 1st September 2018 he published his debut novel Empty Nights. Jack has also had numerous short stories published as well as having his play Captured performed at the Chelsea Theatre in 2013 and being the assistant producer on the radio play The Minister’s Secret in 2014. @stforce1 | jackdowdswritingblog.com

Alice Fitzgerald is a freelance writer and journalist. She has been published in magazines and websites including HELLO! magazine, Good Housekeeping and Huffington Post. Her Mother’s Daughter is her debut novel. Born in London to Irish parents, she now lives in Madrid where she runs a regular open mic, but is back and forth to London all the time. 

 @AliceFitzWrites

Lucy Tertia George is a writer who, after many decades’ copywriting and ghostwriting, had her first novel published in October 2018 by Starhaven Press. At 50 years old she finally feels like an infant phenomenon. THREE WOMEN draws on Lucy’s upbringing as part of a theatrical family and her marriage to a Sicilian American to tell the story of three resourceful women who free themselves from society’s expectations of them as wives, mothers and artists. Lucy also performs as a singer and satirist under the name Lucy Lyrical. facebook: lucytertiageorge | www.starhaven.org.uk/

Born in Aden, Barry Stewart Hunter grew up in the Middle East and Scotland. He is the author of two short story collections, Something You Once Told Me and Stories for Boys and Other Tales, and a novel, Aden (October 2017), a ravishing tale of love, loss, ambition and betrayal set against an end-of-empire backdrop of revolution. As well as featuring in literary reviews, his stories about replica watches have been collected in anthologies and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. He is a former Bafta Scotland ‘best newcomer’ in script and a graduate in screenwriting of the National Film and Television School. He lives in north London.

“A POWERFUL EVOCATION OF A YOUNG MAN’S LIFE AND A QUEER LOVE LETTER TO 1960s PARIS” www.rhombuswriters.co.uk | www.bbelieve.co.uk

Stephen Leslie is a writer, film maker and photographer based in London. His films have been shown on the BBC and Channel 4 and his photographs have been used as album and book covers and even on bottles of beer. When he is not out taking photos he’s inside writing screenplays and short stories. His first book, SPARKS – Adventures In Street Photography has just been published by Unbound. stephenleslie.co.uk  | instagram: step_hen_les_lie

Chris McCrudden was born in South Shields (no, he doesn’t know Cheryl) and has been, at various points in his life, a butcher’s boy, a burlesque dancer and a hand model for a giant V for Victory sign on Canary Wharf. He now lives in London and, when not writing books, works in PR, so in many ways you could describe his life as a full-time fiction. If you like science fiction, graphs and gifs from RuPaul’s Drag Race you can follow him on Twitter for all three, sometimes at once @cmccrudden | battlestarsuburbia.com/ 

Ivy Ngeow was born and raised in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. A graduate of the Middlesex University Writing MA programme, Ivy won the 2005 Middlesex University Literary Prize out of almost 1500 entrants worldwide. Most recently she won the 2016 International Proverse Prize for her first novel Cry of the Flying Rhino. Heart of Glass is her second novel.

 @ivyngeow / writengeow.com /  Goodreads: Heart of Glass

Zelda Rhiando lives in South London with her husband, two daughters and four cats, and is one of the founders of the Brixton BookJam – the quarterly literary event that has hosted readings by established and emerging writers since 2012. She is the author of two novels, Caposcripti and Fukushima Dreams, and is currently working on a third. When not writing she can be found child-wrangling and making digital products. @badzelda | badzelda.com

Toni Scott is a retired senior manager in further education formerly a teacher in French German in secondary schools and further education. Lambeth resident for 40 years, 18 years in Herne Hill and 22 years in Norwood. Her interests include tennis, dogs, gardening, cinema, music and reading. Adrift is her first book.

Padraic Walsh is a playwright, screenwriter and fiction writer. He is 2017-2018 Writer on Attachment with the Oxford Playhouse and won the Walter Swan Trust Playwriting Award in 2015. In May 2017 Padraic’s play Foxes was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and was shortlisted for Best Original Audio Drama at the 2018 BBC Audio Drama Awards. His fiction has appeared in The Stinging Fly and Cyphers. He is represented by Nick Quinn at The Agency (London).  

http://theagency.co.uk/the-clients/padraic-walsh/  | @Walsh_Padraic