Paula Lennon was born to Jamaican parents in England. She lived in Jamaica during her teens and developed a great affinity for the island. Although Paula came back to England to study law and was once a London commercial lawyer, she eventually saw sense and returned to live where the weather is more conducive to smiling. On most days Paula can be found in Montego Bay, writing novels in many genres or just admiring the Caribbean Sea.

Her first historical novel is THE CASE OF THE MAD DOCTOR, published by Canelo on 10 July 2025. Written as THE ADVENTURES OF ISAIAH OLLENU, the book placed second in the I Am In Print Novel Awards 2023 sponsored by Canelo.

Since 2017, Philip Yorke has been absorbed in the turbulent times of Seventeenth Century Britain. But for almost two decades, he worked as an award-winning newspaper and broadcast journalist – gathering facts and stitching stories together.

Rebellion, Philip’s first novel, was published in 2019. It was positively received by readers and reviewers alike all over the world. Redemption, the second part of the Hacker Chronicles, followed in 2022. Both books tell the story of the life and times of Francis Hacker, one of Parliament’s most courageous military commanders during the conflict that resulted in three civil wars, a king losing his head, and the rise of Oliver Cromwell.

A further three more novels are planned in the series. The third instalment is scheduled to be published in 2026.

In 2023, Sunshine on my mind, a standalone story of a two-week holiday in the life of a 12-year-old boy, set in Yorkshire during the summer of 1977, was published. It is a part biographical, part fictional, account of life in the seventies.

Today, Philip Yorke lives in the Midlands with his wife, Julie, and two of their five children (the others have fled the nest). When he is not writing, Philip can be found giving talks on a variety of Civil War-related subjects, reading newspapers and books, drinking coffee at a favourite bolt hole, and supporting his favourite charity.

Renita D’Silva has had fifteen historical fiction novels published. Victory Days for West India Dock Road, the new book in her West India Dock Road WW2 saga series will be published on 1 July. Her short stories have been published in The View from Here, Bartleby Snopes, this zine, Platinum Page, Paragraph Planet, Verve, the Best of the Net anthology, the Arts Council funded Bridges Not Borders anthology of prizewinning stories, among others. They have been nominated for the Pushcart prize, shortlisted for the LoveReading Very Short Story award and The Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize and longlisted for the BBC National Short Story award. Her short story, Put On The Spot, has been selected to be published in the Guilty Secrets CWA Anthology edited by Martin Edwards, to be published by Flame Tree in 2026. Her first psychological thriller, The Neighbours, won the Joffe Books Prize 2023. Her third psychological thriller, Two Perfect Couples, is out now.

Jem Poster is the author of two historical novels, Courting Shadows (Sceptre, 2002; translated into German, Polish and Spanish) and Rifling Paradise (Sceptre, 2006; translated into German). He is co-author, with Sarah Burton, of Eliza Mace (Duckworth, 2024), the first in a series of historical detective mysteries; the second book in the series will be published by Duckworth in 2025. He is also co-author, with Sarah Burton, of a handbook for fiction-writers, The Book You Need to Read to Write the Book You Want to Write (Cambridge University Press, 2022) which contains a substantial section on approaches to historical research in the context of fiction-writing.

 

Sophie’s first book, The Lost Queen, a biography of Catherine of Braganza, was listed as one of the top ten history books of 2024 by the Smithsonian Magazine. Formerly a research fellow, she specialises in social history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with a big pinch of international politics.

Penny Boxall is an award-winning poet and writer for children whose work draws on her career in museums.

Her first novel for children aged 9-12, Letty and the Mystery of the Golden Thread, is published by Puffin and is Blackwell’s Children’s Book of the Month for February 2025.

Her first poetry collection, Ship of the Line (Eyewear, 2014/Valley Press, 2018), is a cabinet of curiosities, reassembling historical lives from overlooked objects. It won the Edwin Morgan poetry award, Scotland’s largest poetry prize, in 2016. Who Goes There? followed from Valley Press in 2018. Again, historical eccentrics dominated, alongside a developing personal tone and a variety of narrative masks. Her current work, Lights Out, is more inward-searching still, marking a deepening interest in voice. It won awards from the Authors’ Foundation and New Writing North (2019).

Penny’s collaboration with woodblock artist Naoko Matsubara, In Praise of Hands, was published by the Ashmolean. She has held a number of residencies, including a visiting research fellowship in the Creative Arts at Merton College, Oxford, and fellowships at Hawthornden Castle, Chateau de Lavigny and Cove Park. Her poem ‘A Wedding List’ won the 2018 Mslexia/PBS international women’s poetry competition.

After graduating from UEA with an MA in Creative Writing, Penny worked for museums including the Ashmolean, the Royal Collection, the Wordsworth Trust and the Laurence Sterne Trust at Shandy Hall. She has taught on the Poetry MA at Oxford Brookes and for the Poetry School. She has held Royal Literary Fund Fellowships at the Universities of York and Cambridge, and is now an RLF Bridge Fellow.