According to the boarding passes handed in at checkout…
Alan Baker was born and raised in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and has lived in Nottingham since 1985 where he runs the poetry publisher Leafe Press. Recent books include Riverrun, a series of modernist sonnets about the River Trent, and A Book of Odes.
Shaun Belcher…still smoking at back of the garage. Used to be a poet before the internet ruined things.
Lucy Bellingham is the pseudonym of a writer, cineaste and activist whose public-facing role and complicated family background necessitates the use of a pseudonym. Lucy lives and works in the North East. She isn’t a fan of streaming and is building an eclectic collection of physical media.
Her film writing for Chainlink is her first published work.
Amy Clarke is an international woman of mystery who is striving to become Empress of the Known Universe.
Dennis O’Donnell is 73 years old, a husband, father and grandfather. Former teacher and psychiatric nursing orderly. Shakespeare nut, though also addicted to the works of Raymond Chandler – which would account for his 23 novels (independently published) about West Lothian detective, Jack Black. He has had three books of poetry published in Scotland: Two Clocks Ticking (1997), Smoke and Mirrors (2003) and The Dossier on McQuarry (2022). This last couple collection also shows some Chandler influence.
Neil Fulwood was born in Nottingham, where he still lives and works as a bus driver. He has four collections with Shoestring Press: No Avoiding It, Can’t Take Me Anywhere, Service Cancelled and The Point of the Stick; and a volume of political satires, Mad Parade, with Smokestack Books.
Martin Hayes was born in London and has lived in the Edgware Road area of it all his life. After leaving school at 15, he has worked as a leaflet distributor, accounts clerk, courier, telephonist, recruitment manager and a controller. He has worked in the same day courier industry for over 30 years and is the author of 7 collections of poetry including, When We Were Almost Like Men (Smokestack, 2015). The Things Our Hands Once Stood For (Culture Matters, 2018) Roar! (Smokestack, 2018), Ox (Knives Spoons and Forks Press, 2021), Underneath (Smokestack, 2021) and Machine Poems (Smokestack, 2025) In June of this year, he will have a New & Selected coming out with Broken Sleep Books.
Andy Hedgecock is a freelance writer and wanderer of Nottinghamshire’s post-industrial landscapes. A deserter from the ranks of Britain’s AI research workforce, he has (as revealed in his contribution to this issue) spent 65% of his working life in bullshit jobs.
His earliest reviews, essays and interviews – written in the 1980s – were published by the anarchist publications Freedom and The Raven. Since then, he has contributed to The Morning Star, The Spectator, Penguin/Time Out City Guides, The Oxford Companion to English Literature, Conversations with Steve Erickson, Foundation, The Breaking Windows Anthology, Interzone, Black Static, The Third Alternative, Undefined Boundary and Short Fiction in Theory and Practice – for which he is also a peer reviewer.
Andy is currently fiction co-editor for the Morning Star and the regular interviewer for ParSec. His fiction has been published by Comma Press, the Morning Star and Popshot.
Roy Marshall’s books are The Sun Bathers (2012), The Great Animator (2017) and After Montale (2019). His new collection Light Work is due later this year. Roy lives in Leicester, where he works in adult education.
Leanne Moden is a poet, theatremaker and educator, based in Nottingham. She’s performed all across the UK and Europe, and her second pamphlet of poetry, Get Over Yourself, was published with Burning Eye Books in 2020.
Antony Owen is a writer from Coventry, the home of ska music and allegedly peace and reconciliation.
Maria Taylor is a British Cypriot poet who has been highly commended in the Forward Prizes. She has been widely published including poems and reviews in The Guardian, Magma and The Times Literary Supplement. Her most recent collection is Dressing for the Afterlife (Nine Arches Press).
Jonathan Taylor is an author, editor, lecturer and critic. His most recent books are Scablands and Other Stories (Salt, 2023) and A Physical Education: On Bullying, Discipline & Other Lessons (Goldsmiths, 2024). He directs the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester.
His website is www.jonathanptaylor.co.uk.
