Jane Rogers is the author of five novels including Island and Mr Wroe's Virgins. She has won both the Betty Trask and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize.

Heather Leach is a writer and sometime stand-up comedian living in Manchester.

Cath Stainsliffeis author of four novels featuring the single-mother private detective Sal Kilkenny. She is also author of the hit ITV series Blue Murder, starring Caroline Quentin.

Tim Willocks has published four novels, including Green River Rising.

Adrian Slatcher was born in 1967 in Walsall, and has an M.A in in Novel Writing from Manchester University. His work has been shortlisted for the Lichfield Prize and Northern Short Story Contest, and he has stories appearing in PROP and Main Street Journal. He lives in South Manchester.

David Bowker has worked as a journalist, written a column for The Times, and is the author of six novels, most recently Rawhead (2002) and Rawhead in Love (2004). The TV adaptation of his fourth novel From Stockport With Love, starring Martin Clunes, is soon to be filmed for ITV.