Festival Tutors
Bookable Workshop Sessions and One-to-Ones

Julie Amanda Bokowiec

                                                                             Julie is a playwright and theatre artist. Her current touring production THE LAST CUCKOO stars Olivier Award winning actor Paul Copley.  Her plays have been nominated and short-listed for a number of major awards including the Whitbread London Fringe Theatre Award for THE RED ROOM, the Soho Theatre’s Verity Bargate Award for PUNCH and BITE (TOBY-DOG-SAVAGE) also short listed for the Bruntwood Award, and the Alfred Bradley Award (BBC Radio).  Julie has written and directed original drama and music theatre works in association with Opera North and Trestle Theatre Company and has been commissioned by, among others, the Royal Theatre Bath, Bradford Theatres, Harrogate International Festival, the Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and a range of international festivals. As a performer Julie regularly tours internationally and is an established figure in the emerging field of digital interactive performance.  Julie teaches a highly popular playwriting course at the Lawrence Batley Theatre (now in its fifth year) is a regular guest lecturer at a number of Universities and has delivered a number of one-off workshops and short courses for a range of theatre companies including Library Theatre Manchester.  Julie is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Huddersfield.

 Linda Lewis

 Linda Lewis is a full time writer, making a living from selling short stories to a variety of magazines including My Weekly, Woman’s Weekly, and Yours. She writes the Short Story Success column in Writers’ Forum where she passes on her tips and experience. She has been selling stories to Take A Break  and their sister magazine, Fiction Feast, for ten years. In this session she will be looking at the kind of stories they publish and how to increase your chances of making a sale to this profitable market. There will be an opportunity to ask any questions and handouts will be available to anyone who leaves their email address. If you have written a story for Take a Break, why not bring it with you to the Festival? Linda will be happy to give you some feedback.

www.akacatherinehoward.weebly.com   
http://akacatherinehoward.blogspot.com
WEB SITE – www.akacatherinehoward.weebly.com
NEW!   Follow me on TWITTER, just search for Linda Lewis or 55linda55

Simon Whaley 

Simon Whaley is the bestselling author of 100 Ways For A Dog To Train Its Human, which has sold over 223,000 copies, as well as the author of nine other non-fiction books. His latest, The Positively Productive Writer, is published by Compass Books and offers writers practical steps on how to reject rejection and enjoy positive steps to publication.

Simon has written hundreds of magazine articles for publications as diverse as The Lady, Discover Britain, BBC Countryfile, Outdoor Photography, Dogs Monthly, Writing Magazine, Writers’ News, Amateur Photographer and Holiday Villas and Cottages. He is a regular contributor to The New Writer, and Country Walking.

Simon’s short stories have been published in the UK, Ireland and Australia, in Yours, Take a Break, Take a Break’s Fiction Feast, Ireland’s Own, The Weekly News and That’s Life Fast Fiction.

More information can be found about Simon on his website at www.simonwhaley.co.uk, or you can follow him on Twitter: @simonwhaley. 

Alison Chisholm  

Alison Chisholm has written nine collections of poetry, the distance learning poetry course of The Writers Bureau, and numerous textbooks on the craft of writing.  She is a Writing Magazine columnist and competition adjudicator, and gives talks, readings and workshops throughout the UK and overseas.

New for this year – extra Open Talks/Workshops and One-to-Ones 

Steve Bowkett

Steve Bowkett was born and brought up in the mining valleys of South Wales. He started writing for pleasure at the age of thirteen, shortly after moving to the Leicester area, where he still lives. 

Steve’s background is in education. He taught English for 18 years in Leicestershire High Schools, though is now a full-time writer, storyteller, educational consultant and also a qualified hypnotherapist.

In his time he has written fantasy and SF for teenagers, adult and teen horror, romance, mainstream fiction for pre-teens, fiction and non-fiction for younger readers and poetry for all ages. He has also published a number of educational books, principally in the fields of literacy, creativity, thinking skills and emotional resourcefulness. To date Steve has published over fifty titles plus numerous short stories and poems.   www.stevebowkett.co.uk 

New for 2012- Friday Evening Entertainment

We would like to introduce you to Mark Gwynne Jones
an hour to look forward to on Friday 31st August 2012.

Five times fringe-award winner, Mark Gwynne Jones is well known for mind altering poetry with an almost music-hall edge. He mixes humour and poignancy with great skill and through collaborations with film-makers and musicians he is pushing poetry in new and exciting directions. Mark’s work is contagious, gritty and sometimes startlingly sensitive. 

‘Inspired… one of the most accomplished performance poets in the land…drawing the audience into a world where things are not quite what they seem’
The Guardian 

‘Astonishing…you’ll love this show!’
The Daily Mail 

‘The brilliant Mark Gwynne Jones. Passionate…captivating and slightly mad, mind altering poetry’  Edinburgh Three Weeks 

‘Mark Gwynne Jones should be ruined with fame and money before he shows the rest of us up for the bunch of sissies we are. But if you don’t want the truth, don’t call a poet, at least not a real one.’ Martin Newell, The Independent 

‘I always stipulate that who ever is on with me hasn’t got to be any good – this one got past me – I don’t know how, but heads will roll.’
John Cooper Clarke 

Appearing solo and with Psychicbread (a show combining poetry and music) Mark has toured with Kate Rusby and performed alongside The Levellers, Alan Bates, Mark Radcliffe and John Peel favourites Half Man Half Biscuit. He has sold poetry to the CIA; written poetry with disenfranchised kids in some of the most deprived areas of Britain and held writing residencies at The Harley Gallery; The Cornerhouse Cinema, Manchester;  Sudbury Prison and with Service Children’s Education in the Netherlands, Germany and Cyprus. Mark regularly performs at Ronnie Scott’s, Soho and at music and literature festivals throughout the UK and abroad. In 2008 Loughborough University commissioned Mark to write a series of poems for a performance walk and following the event’s success, Gunpowder Parks commissioned him to write in and around four of London’s central parks exploring what is meant by ‘common ground’ in 21st century Britain. In 2011 Glassball Arts commissioned Mark to write and record a new collection of lyrical works inspired by places in and around the Peak District. Mark has won The National Trust Poetry Competition and the Buxton Festival Fringe. He has staged multi-media shows with artists in Glasgow, Copenhagen and Amsterdam and has appeared on a compilation CD alongside new work by Rick Wakeman, Gordon Giltrap and Roy Harper (The Sky Goes all the Way Home, Voiceprint Records). 

 With film-maker Andy Lawrence, Mark has produced a unique series of 6 film-poems. It’s Only Water was broadcast by ITV and The Message, a screenplay mixing poetry and drama, ran for seven nights on SKY television.

 BBC Radio 3’s Verity Sharp featured Mark’s album of poetry and music In the light of this (Route, 2007) and his debut collection the book/cd Psychicbread (Route, 2003) has played on radio stations from California to Sydney, Australia. Both publications are available from www.route-online.com  

For contact details, interviews, photographs and other press related matters, please contact Isabel Galan at Route on 01977 797695 or by email Isabel@route-online.com 

For free films, music downloads and more visit
http://www.route-online.com/authors/mark-gwynne-jones.html