Our Book Editors

Paul Roberts is a writer and business consultant with a love for effective communication. His first book was published by The Economist in 2007 and is now in its third edition. He has had several further books published by Kogan Page, forming part of their hugely influential ‘Business Success’ series. Paul’s latest non-fiction book has been published by Routledge in their ‘Absolute Essentials’ series, causing Paul to realise, if ever proof was needed, that it is far harder to write a short book than a long one. Paul writes frequently for magazines and professional publications as diverse as the Independent, Evening Standard, Maxim and Viz comic. He has also written for television. He has a novel nearing completion. As a reviewer, editor and teacher of creative writing, he has supported developing writers for many years.

Dr Pauline Frederica Kiernan is an award-winning playwright, commissioned screenwriter and prize-winning short story writer.

She has been a literary consultant for 12 years and has taught Creative Writing on Oxford University’s Creative Writing Undergraduate and MA programmes.

Pauline is a former lecturer at the University of Oxford and a Shakespeare scholar, and was appointed Leverhulme Fellowship at Shakespeare’s Globe to work with Mark Rylance and the directors and actors in its first six years as dramaturg and research resource.

She is the author of the snappily-entitled Screenwriting They Can’t Resist: How to Create Screenplays of Originality and Cinematic Power. Break The Rules and is a theatre and film consultant. Her monographs, Shakespeare’s Theory of Drama, and Staging Shakespeare at the New Globe were published to worldwide acclaim, and her best-selling Filthy Shakespeare: Shakespeare’s Most Outrageous Sexual Puns was an Observer Book of the Year. She is currently writing the first of a series of crime novels set in Italy, and a book about Keats.

Philip is the author of The Other Book and The Liberators (Bloomsbury). The Liberators was a Children’s Book of the Year for 2010.

Philip Womack was born in Sussex, and educated at Lancing and Oriel College, Oxford, where he read Classics and English. After graduating, he worked at Literary Review for four years, before becoming freelance in 2008 on publication of his first novel, The Other Book. Six novels for children followed, including The Liberators, The Double Axe and The Arrow of Apollo, and his first non-fiction work for adults, How to Teach Classics to Your Dog, was published in October 2020.

He teaches Creative Writing to BA and MA students at London University, and has been a literary critic for nearly twenty years, as well as a freelance journalist for a variety of national newspapers and magazines, writing on topics such as education and literature, and even an article on pyjamas for Tatler magazine. He is currently on the Management Committee of the Society of Authors and a Contributing Editor to Literary Review.

Find Philip on Twitter here: @WomackPhilip

Pippa began her children’s book career as a bookseller and advisor to publishers before beginning to write books herself. She’s had over a hundred titles published, some of them award-winning.

From Saturday girl to manager of Heffers Children’s Bookshop, Pippa went on to work with top children’s book editors before beginning her own writing career. For the last quarter century, Pippa has combined writing her own books with teaching and critiquing to develop writing for children skills in others.

To date, Pippa has had over 140 picture books, early readers, and MG novels published. Best known is picture book You Choose, illustrated by Nick Sharratt, with sales well over a million copies, and awards from York Libraries and Mumsnet. The well-known Winnie the Witch storybooks are all written by Pippa under the name of ‘Laura Owen’.  Pippa has had novels shortlisted for the Kathleen Fidler Award, the Smarties Prize, and The Young Telegraph Book of the Year. New novel, The Great Sea Dragon Discovery, has won the Young Quills Award for best children’s historical novel, 2019.

Pippa worked for OUP on novels by Jacqueline Wilson, Tim Bowler, Helena Pielichaty and Geraldine McCaughrean.  Through Jericho Writers she has worked with writers such as Pip Jones and Catherine Emmett.

Find Pippa on Twitter here: @pippagoodhart

Rebecca has been an editor and teacher of fiction-writing for almost twenty years, working with upwards of 200 authors in a broad range of genres.

She is the author of the bestselling epic character-driven novel, Dancing on Thorns, which was published by Random House in the UK and USA to wide critical acclaim in 2005. Before that, she was a script supervisor and editor in the West End theatre for many years.

In addition to her own writing and editing, Rebecca has given lectures and masterclasses in fiction writing for a number of colleges and organisations and is a regular teacher at Jericho Writers’ Festival of Writing, running courses and workshops in topics that include character creation, plotting, problem solving, and literary style.

Many of Rebecca’s editing clients over the years have gone on to sign with agents and achieve publication. She is happy to work long term with authors on multiple manuscripts.

Find Rebecca on Twitter here: @HorsfallAuthor

Described by acclaimed short story writer and novelist Dan Rhodes as ‘one of my favourites’, Richard is the author of Hound Dog (Jonathan Cape), the story of a depraved Elvis impersonator on the run.

Mixing dark humour with scenarios both banal and fantastic, Richard Blandford has walked the line between the comic and the horrifying since 2004. He is the author of the Elvis impersonator novel Hound Dog (‘Squalid, raucous and wildly entertaining’ – Dan Rhodes), the coming-of-age tale Flying Saucer Rock & Roll (‘He has captured everything’ – John Higgs), and Whatever You Are Is Beautiful, a new eBook about an illness that turns people into superheroes. He is also the author of the short story collections The Shuffle and Erotic Nightmares.

His art survey London in the Company of Painters was published by Laurence King in 2017 and was listed by Martin Gayford as one of the art books of the year in The Spectator, and a London book of the year in the Evening Standard. A comic strip horror story, ‘The Fixer’, appeared in David Lloyd’s online comics anthology Aces Weekly in 2019. He has written articles for the Guardian website and the art periodicals Frieze and Elephant, and has been a literary consultant since 2007.

Find Richard on Twitter here: @rblandford

Richard is an experienced senior commissioning editor for non-fiction at Headline (part of Hachette UK), where he has published a number of Sunday Times bestsellers. Richard is also a novelist. His debut, Something to Live For, was published by Orion (UK) and Penguin (US), and has sold in twenty languages.

Something to Live For (commercial reading group fiction) was a Barnes & Noble book of the month and was optioned for TV. The New York Times said, ‘I love this book with my whole heart.’ His second novel, When We Were Young, came out in 2021.

As an editor at Headline, he works mainly in biography and narrative non-fiction. He has published memoirs by comedians James Acaster, Miles Jupp, Katy Wix, and Joel Dommett. He has also worked with the likes of Dave Davies of The Kinks, sports stars Steven Gerrard and Andy Murray, brands like Downton Abbey, and quirky narratives such as A Tomb With a View by Peter Ross – recently awarded Scottish Non-Fiction book of the year.

Find Richard on Twitter here: @richardroper

Rosie has worked as a novelist and as writer, mentor and editor in theatre, television, magazines, advertising, comedy and the corporate market for more than 30 years.

Rosie Fiore was born and grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She is a teacher of creative writing, effective business writing and English. She has also studied playwriting with the National Theatre. Her most recent dramatic project was a stage adaptation of Dracula.

Rosie’s has had eight novels published. She is published by Struik, Quercus and Allen & Unwin under her own name. This Year’s Black and Babies in Waiting were both longlisted for the South African Sunday Times Literary Award. Rosie is also published by Orion as Cass Hunter. The After Wife was translated into nine languages and optioned for a film in China.

Find Rosie on Twitter here: @rosiefiore

Rosie Walker is a writer of psychological thrillers: Secrets of a Serial Killer (2020), and The House Fire (2022), both published by Harper Collins‘ One More Chapter. Since publication, Secrets of a Serial Killer has sold more than 14,000 copies across ebook, paperback and audiobook.

Rosie gained a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Edinburgh, which taught her the ins and outs of great fiction: structure, pace, plot, characterisation and conflict. She also learned the art of providing insightful feedback on others’ writing, whether that’s big-picture plot issues or the detail of a line edit.

She is currently writing her third novel and working as a freelance editor, specialising in psychological thrillers and women’s fiction. She loves adult fiction with mysteries and puzzles: secret passageways, abandoned houses, the novel version of Jonathan Creek, or the Famous Five for grown ups.

Find Rosie on Twitter here: @ciderwithrosie

Rufus Purdy is an experienced editor and literary agent, based in Brighton. He worked at Curtis Brown from 2012 to 2018, where he combined the roles of Editor, New Writing at Curtis Brown Creative and Editor at its digital imprint Studio 28. Highlights included being the editor for espionage-fiction author Alex Gerlis, who sold more than 180,000 copies of the novels they worked on together, and working with Squeeze songwriter Chris Difford on his memoir Some Fantastic Place (Weidenfeld & Nicolson).

He established the Write Here… novel-writing school in 2018, which runs low-priced courses online and across the UK. Several students – including Paul Laird (The Birth and Impact of Britpop, Pen & Sword), Roisin Maguire (Bardo, Profile Books) and Melissa Welliver (My Love Life and the Apocalypse, Chicken House) – went on to get book deals. Many clients he’s worked with as an editor – including Natalie Lewis (Don’t Believe the Hype, Hodder), Loraine Peck (The Second Son, Text Publishing) and Adam Simcox (The Dying Squad, Gollancz) have also found publishing success.

Russel D McLean’s debut novel, The Good Son (Five Leaves Crime), was published in 2008, and shortlisted for “Best First Novel” by the Private Eye Writers of America on 2010.

Since then he has written several more crime novels, including the darkly comic Ed’s Dead (Contraband), which was praised by Martina Cole as “a really authentic and remarkable read! I loved it!”

A former bookseller, Russel is now a freelance author, editor, and teacher. He has worked for publishers of various sizes as a developmental editor, including work on one book that was shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize for best Scottish Crime Fiction at the Bloody Scotland Festival. He has also run masterclasses in fiction writing for festivals, universities and creative writing groups, as well as advising MLitt students on the fiction element of their dissertations for the University of Dundee’s crime writing and forensics course. For two years, he wrote a crime fiction review column in the Scottish Sunday Herald, and has interviewed authors for several newspapers and magazines.

Although Russel’s primary concern has been noir and thriller fiction, he has also worked across a variety of genres as an editor including horror and SFF. You can find more about Russel and his work at his website, www.russeldmcleanbooks.com  and find him on Twitter here: @RusseldMclean

Sam Jordison is a co-director at Galley Beggar Press, the award winning indy press.

He has extensive editorial experience and knowledge of the book world – and has also been on the other side of the fence, having written several best selling works of non-fiction, including the notorious Crap Towns series (Boxtree, Pan Macmilan), the best-selling I Spy for adults series, a book about Literary London (co-authored with Eloise Millar), political books like Enemies Of The People and The 10 Worst Of Everything.

As a journalist, he mainly writes for The Guardian, and mainly about books. He runs the Not The Booker Prize, and the Guardian’s online book club, The Reading Group. He has also taught about publishing on several Creative Writing university courses, as well as teaching a course on publishing at Greenwich University and journalism at UEA.

Find Sam on Twitter here: @samjordison

Sarah is a Costa shortlisted and bestselling author of YA and psychological thrillers and is published in eleven territories.

She began her career as an advertising copywriter before a break to have children gave her the time to pursue her writing dream. Her debut novel, The Hanged Man Rises (Simon & Schuster), was shortlisted for the Costa Children’s Book Award in 2013. Another historical YA novel followed before she was approached by Orion to write psychological thrillers. Tattletale was an Amazon bestseller, as were The Other Couple, The Mothers and The Festival. The Mothers was The Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month. She also likes to dip her toe in horror, with short story ebooks The Last Gift, and Get Them Out of My Head for the No Sleep Podcast.

Sarah has a new YA thriller out with Scholastic this October called You Better Watch Out, and she has been working with Anthony Horowitz and Storytel on a new series of Sherlock Holmes stories, out next year.

Find Sarah on Twitter here: @sarahjnaughton

Dr Sharon Zink is a former English Literature academic, having studied at London and Cambridge, who has over eleven years’ experience of editing and creative writing teaching.

Her first novel, Welcome to Sharonville (Unthank Books, 2014), was longlisted for The Guardian First Book Award and is currently being developed as a TV series. She has won numerous awards, such as being named as Young Poet of the Year and Writers Inc. Writer of the Year, as well as being shortlisted three times for The New Writer Short Story Award and for The Raymond Carver Prize.

She is very proud that many of her clients have gone on to get agents and deals, including bestselling authors, Amanda Prowse and Kathryn Hughes, as well as the twice Macmillan-published, Mark Gartside, and Kate Glanville, whose books are with Accent and Penguin US.

She has recently helped Helen Fisher’s novel become the lead title for Simon and Schuster in 2020.

Find Sharon on Twitter here: @SharonZink

An experienced teacher and mentor, over the years Sibyl has helped many writers realise their ambitions. Artists she has worked with have gone on to win literary prizes and awards.

After studying English at Cambridge, Sibyl Ruth went on to publish two small press collections of poetry and win the Mslexia Poetry Competition. Her poems have been widely anthologised and broadcast. She has also scripted and presented two features for Radio 4. Listen to Them Breathing was about Quaker poets while Terezin Dreams considered the poetry written by her German-Jewish great aunt Rose Scooler, while she was in a concentration camp. She lives in Birmingham and has been the city’s Poet Laureate.

Find her on LinkedIn here.

Stuart Walton is an established writer and editor who has had sixteen books published, and has been a senior writer and inspector on the Good Food Guide for thirty years.

Stuart Walton is a writer and editor who has had sixteen books published. These range from a history of intoxicants, Out of It (now in its second edition), to critical studies of the emotions and the five senses, as well as a debut novel, The First Day in Paradise (2016). His most recent work is an inquiry into mayhem and disorder, An Excursion into Chaos, published by Bloomsbury in 2021. He has been translated into twelve languages.

As well as being a prolific book critic for, among others, the TLS, the London Magazine, the LA Review of Books and Review 31, Stuart is a Royal Literary Fund Tutorial Fellow at Plymouth University. In his early career, he wrote on food and wine, co-edited the Hachette Wine Guide and has been a senior writer and inspector on the Good Food Guide for thirty years. He was educated at Manchester University and Lincoln College, Oxford, and holds the Oxford Advanced Certificate in Creative Writing.

Find Stuart on Twitter here: @stuartwalton1

Tanya Byrne is an award-winning author of four contemporary YA novels (Hodder), the first of which earned her a nomination for New Writer of the Year at the National Book Awards.

Her books have been published around the world and have been translated into Spanish, German, Italian and Polish. She has also contributed to several short story anthologies, including A Change is Gonna Come, which won the YA Book Prize and was the Sunday Times Children’s Book of the Week. Last year, she wrote Floored, a collaborative novel with Sara Barnard, Holly Bourne, Non Pratt, Melinda Salisbury, Lisa Williamson and Eleanor Wood. Her agent, Claire Wilson at Rogers, Coleridge & White, represents some of the best children’s and YA authors in the country, including Katherine Rundell and Sally Green. A regular at festivals like YALC, Hay and the Edinburgh Festival, Tanya is passionate about diversity in publishing and encouraging writers from marginalised backgrounds to tell their stories.

Find Tanya on Twitter here: @tanyabyrne

Teresa has worked in children’s publishing for 27 years. She’s an editor and an award-winning author, with 11 picture books and 80 educational books published.

Teresa worked in-house as a Commissioning Editor for Heinemann and Oxford University Press before going freelance, and now combines editorial work with writing picture books and books for young readers. She has worked with authors such as Rod Hunt, Jo Nadin, Jamie Smart, Jeanne Willis, Nick Ward and Elen Caldecott.

She has also been the Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at the University of Buckingham, giving writing tutorials to university students on a 1-to-1 basis.

Teresa loves visiting schools, libraries and festivals to inspire children to write their own stories. Her books have been translated into 15 languages, and her first picture book, Very Little Red Riding Hood, won the Oxfordshire Book Award and the Coventry Inspiration Book Award.

Find Teresa on Twitter here: @theapy

Trisha Sakhlecha is the critically acclaimed author of two psychological thrillers, Your Truth or Mine? and Can You See Me Now?, published by Pan Macmillan.

Trisha’s writing has been compared to that of Salman Rushdie, been praised by award-winning authors and reviewed in the Sunday Times, the Times, the Guardian, the Herald, Harper’s Bazaar, Daily Mail and more. She’s been on panels at festivals and events and spoken about her work and the importance of representation on BBC Radio 4 Open Book, BBC Radio Kent & Talk Radio.

Trisha enjoys crime, thriller and upmarket women’s fiction and has particular interest in novels featuring complex female protagonists and diverse stories. Trisha grew up in New Delhi and now lives in London.

Find Trisha on Twitter here: @TrishSakhlecha

Victoria’s career spans both writing and publishing.

Her career began as a secretary in the children’s books department at Hodder and Stoughton. She moved to Methuen, which merged with Heinemann as part of Reed Elsevier. She became an editor, eventually specialising in picture books. She went freelance in 2000 and has since been involved in all sorts of writing projects.

Victoria’s wide experience of writing and editing includes children’s picture books through to teen fiction, education and teachers’ books, academic writing, and general fiction and non-fiction. She has worked for publishing houses, universities and individuals. She advises and mentors authors, sometimes over many years. She has been with Jericho Writers since it formed as the Writers’ Workshop. Children’s books, especially picture books, remain her passion.

Even though her editing background is in traditional publishing, Victoria is very interested in the self-publishing route as it provides opportunities to ‘do things differently’. She is also keen on writing for the pure joy of it.

Wes Brown is a writer, editor and researcher with a background in the publishing industry and many years’ experience of teaching creative writing.

Wes was the founding editor of Dead Ink Books, young writer’s co-ordinator at the National Association of Writers in Education and has worked freelance for many literature organisations. He has written for the Times Literary Supplement, Literary Review, New Humanist and his debut novel, Breaking Kayfabe, will be published by Bluemoose in 2023.

Wes has taught Creative Writing at the University of Kent, the University of East London and the City Lit and he’s also been awarded a CHASE PhD scholarship to research Narrative Non-Fiction. In 2021, he undertook research at the University of East Anglia as part of a collaborative project investigating the future of literature and the written word.

Wes strongly believes in working with authors to achieve their own artistic ideals rather than project his own. Wes loves non-fiction narratives, memoirs, literary and speculative fiction.

Find Wes on Twitter here: @wesbrownwriter