Sean O’Brien’s eleventh collection of poems, Embark, was published by Picador in 2022. His chapbook Impasse: for Jules Maigret appeared from Hercules Editions in May 2023 and his pamphlet Otherwise is due from Dare-Gale this autumn. His work has received various awards, including the T. S. Eliot, Forward and E. M. Forster Prizes. His other work includes fiction, plays, criticism and translation. His translation of Dante’s Inferno appeared in 2006, and the Collected Poems of Abai Kunanbayuli in 2021. In 2017 he was Weidenfeld Visiting Professor at St Anne’s College Oxford. He is Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Peter Armstrong was born 1957 on Tyneside and has lived all his life in North East England. He read Philosophy and English at Sunderland, and has published collections with Enitharmon, Picador & Shoestring. He worked in the NHS as a mental health nurse and in Cognitive-Behaviour Therapy as a therapist, supervisor, teacher and author. He has described himself as an ‘Anglo-Catholic agnostic’ but isn’t so sure now.

Tamar Yoseloff’s seventh collection, Belief Systems, is due from Nine Arches in Summer 2024. She’s also the author of Formerly (with photographs by Vici MacDonald), shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award, and collaborative editions with artists Linda Karshan and Charlotte Harker respectively. She has been a lecturer on the Poetry School / Newcastle University MA in Writing Poetry and has led writing workshops in galleries including the Hayward and the Royal Academy. She won a Cholmondeley Award in 2023.