Steve Attridge

Starting Your Novel

WL3  Sat 29 Jun - Sat 6 Jul 2013 (1 wk)

Steve Attridge has thirteen books published, including adult fiction, psychological thriller, children’s, history, comedy, and two new books ready to go. Nine of his stage plays have been produced and is currently touring his theatre show, Chaos, Carnage and Kulture.  He has written a dozen TV Dramas, numerous one offs, TV documentaries, and Feature Films. Twice a BAFTA nominee, he also won a RTS Award (Best Drama), Best Film Award (GUY X), 2 Writer’s Guild Awards (Billy Webb and The Bill) and TV film awards (Hawkins). As a performance poet, he won an Eric Gregory Award and a slam poetry award.

Helena Drysdale

True Stories

WL2 Sat 15 - Fri 28 Jun 2013 (2 wks)

Helena Drysdale’s books are a mix of travel, memoir and biography. Mother Tongues, travels through tribal Europe (Picador) was Book of the Year in the Independent, Times, Irish Times and Sunday Times. Other books include Strangerland, a family at War (Picador) - Book of the Year in the Sunday Times and Spectator; Looking for George: Love and Death in Romania (Picador), shortlisted for the Esquire/Apple/ Waterstone’s Non-Fiction Award, and the PEN/ J.R. Ackerley Award for Autobiography;  Dancing with the Dead, a journey through Zanzibar and Madagascar, which was also an award-winning TV documentary for Granada/WNET, and Alone through China and Tibet. Her latest is Tibet: A Brief History. She is currently writing a children's novel, and a book about Greece.
 
Helena has appeared on innumerable radio programmes and written for most British newspapers. She has taught creative writing for Arvon, Ways with Words, The Writer's Workshop, Ty Newydd, and is a Skyros regular.

Sophie Hannah

Crime Fiction

WL5  Sat 20 - Sat 27 Jul 2013 (1 wk)

Sophie Hannah is the internationally bestselling author of eight psychological thrillers, the latest of which, The Carrier, will be published in the UK in February 2013.  Sophie's novels are published in more than 25 countries, and have been shortlisted for various awards, including the 2010 Independent Booksellers’ Book of the Year Award, the 2011 Barry Awards and the 2012 Specsavers National Book Awards. Two of Sophie's novels have so far been adapted for ITV in the UK, under the series title Case Sensitive, starring Olivia Williams. In 2004 Sophie won the Daphne Du Maurier Prize for suspense fiction with her short story The Octopus Nest.

Sophie is also an award-winning poet, studied at GCSE and A-level across the UK.  Sophie is a Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge.

Crysse Morrison

Your Writer's Voice

WL7 Sat 10 - Fri 23 Aug 2013 (2 wks)

Crysse was inspired by a Skyros Writers’ Lab session to make a career change and is now a full-time free-lance writer.  Her two novels were published by Hodder & Stoughton and she also writes short fiction, stage drama, and performance poetry. Crysse is an experienced creative writing tutor and has led courses throughout the world.

Sam North

The Art of Writing Fiction

WL1  Sat 8 - Sat 15 Jun 2013 (1 wk)

Sam North, long-listed for the Booker Prize in 2004, has won a Somerset Maugham Award. His novels include The Old Country (2007), The Velvet Rooms (2006), The Unnumbered (2004), The Lie of the Land (2000) and many others.

Working with World Wide Pictures, he has been writing proposals and scripts for corporate films, for Arena and Equinox documentaries, and developing drama series for C4, BBC, ITV, and writing ‘Chapel Street’, ‘The Gifting Programme’ and ‘By Desire’.

Being formerly a director of the world's oldest literary agency AP Watt, he has a thorough understanding of both the publishing world and the film industry. He is currently a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Exeter.

Mez Packer

Aspects of Novel Writing

WL4 Sat 6 - Fri 19 Jul 2013 (2 wks)

Mez Packer studied Philosophy and Literature at Warwick University in the 80s and then spent time in Europe singing jazz in bars and nightclubs. She travelled widely in Asia, the Far East and the Caribbean before becoming a Broadcast Journalist with the BBC.

She is currently Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication and visiting Lecturer in Creative Writing at Coventry University. Mez has varied writing interests from scripts for apps and transmedia projects to short stories, which have appeared in various literary magazines.

Her first novel, Among Thieves, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, 2010. Her second novel, The Game is Altered, was published in February 2012.

Leigh Russell

Writing Successful Fiction

Shelley Weiner

The First Novel

WL6 Sat 27 Jul - Friday 9 Aug 2013 (2 wks)

Shelley Weiner's novels include A Sisters’ Tale, The Last Honeymoon, The Joker, Arnost, and – most recently – The Audacious Mendacity of Lily Green.

She is an Advisory Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund and has taught fiction for institutions that include Birkbeck College, Anglia Ruskin University, the Open University, the British Council, and Durham University Summer School. She is a mentor on the Gold Dust Mentoring Scheme, a reader for The Literary Consultancy, and presents workshops on fiction for Guardian Masterclasses and the Cheltenham Literary Festival.