James Young is a writer and translator from Belfast. His short stories have appeared in a range of publications, and been shortlisted for the Sean O'Faolain, Wasafiri, Fish, and Bath prizes. He co-edits Short Fiction journal, and has an MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck College. ​He was the winner of the 2022 Peirene Stevns Translation Prize, and his translation of The Love of Singular Men by Victor Heringer was a finalist for the 2024 National Book Critics Circle Awards John Leonard Prize and the ALTA First Translation Prize, won the 2024 Jabuti Prize for the best Brazilian novel published abroad, and is shortlisted for the Society of Authors First Translation Prize. He is the founder and director of The Hastings Writers Workshop, and leads our Developing Your Craft, Continuing Study and Intensive writers workshops.

Jen Calleja is a writer, literary translator, and publisher based in Hastings. Her books include Vehicle: a verse novel (Prototype, 2023), the poem sequence Dust Sucker (Makina Books, 2023), the poetry pamphlet Hamburger in the Archive (if a leaf falls press, 2019) and the poetry collection Serious Justice (Test Centre, 2016). She has taught courses, workshops and masterclasses for Arvon Foundation, The Poetry School, The British Library, New Writing South, as well as for numerous universities, and is co-founding publisher at Praspar Press, a small press for Maltese literature in English and English translation. Her most recent book is Goblinhood: Goblin As A Mode, published by Rough Trade in September 2024. Jen gave poetry workshops at Hastings Writers Workshop in 2023 and 2024, and led our Adventures in Experimental Fiction workshop in January 2024.

(Photo by Robin Silas Christian)

Jeremy Atherton Lin is an Asian-American essayist whose work appears widely in publications including The Paris Review, The Yale Review, The Times Literary Supplement, Granta and The Guardian. His debut book Gay Bar won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography and was a New York Times Top Book of 2021. His second book, Deep House, will be published by Penguin in June 2025. Jeremy led our Writing Memoir workshop programme in Summer 2024.

Jess O'Kane is a British Independent Film Awards nominated writer and director working across features & TV. Her screenwriting credits include The Devil's Harmony (Winner: Sundance, Critic's Circle), and upcoming feature Bad Apples (Curzon/Pulse), starring Saoirse Ronan. In TV, she has written original projects for companies such as RED, Little Door, Me + You and Ink Factory. She was recently supported by the BFI to direct her first short, Girl at Party, which was the winner of Best Film at Boundless Film Festival. She studied Screenwriting at the NFTS. Jess led our Intensive Screenwriting workshop in Spring/Summer 2023.

Julia Kotziamani is a Hastings-born artist and writer whose work explores art history, memoir and cultural theory. She studied History of Art at the Courtauld Institute and is the founder, director and lead tutor of Nimble (formerly Hastings Art School), an organisation dedicated to democratising art education and output, and is especially interested in new and challenging voices in art writing. Her work has been widely shown including at the 2018 Venice Biennale, and she won the Almacantar Award for an installation of text-based performance and documentation for her recent MFA degree show at Goldsmiths. Julia gave our Writing Art course in Autumn 2024

Liz Marvin is an editor with over twelve years’ experience in nonfiction. She spent eight years as an editor at Penguin Random House, where she worked with authors such as Caitlin Moran, Chrissie Hynde and Rick Stein. As a freelance editor, she has edited books by a variety of authors, including Fearne Cotton, Claudia Winkleman, Carol Vorderman, Paloma Faith, Monty Don, Sofie Hagen, Alexandra Wilson, Reggie Yates and Stacey Dooley. Her publishing clients include HarperCollins, Orion, Simon and Schuster, Bloomsbury, Bonnier and Pan Macmillan, among others. She has written a number of books and curated quotation collections on topics such as Virginia Woolf, CBD oil, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She is a tutor at the HarperCollins Author Academy. Liz will lead our Writing Creative Nonfiction course starting in March 2025.

Louise Coulthard is a multi-award-winning playwright whose credits include Cockamamy (winner of The Jubilee Fund and Lustrum Award for Outstanding New Play at The Edinburgh Fringe), Watching Rosie and Bitter (longlisted for The Bruntwood Playwriting Prize and shortlisted for the Phil Fox Playwriting Award). Her work has been described as ‘wonderfully delicate, (it) not only touches you, it leaves a faint bruise’ by The Stage and ‘beautifully balanced’ by The Times, and she was awarded a J.B Priestly Writer of Promise award from the Royal Literary Foundation in 2023. Louise led our Writing For The Stage workshop programme in Autumn 2024.

Melinda Salisbury is the bestselling author of multiple teen and young adult novels, including the Sin Eater's Daughter series, Hold Back the Tide, and Her Dark Wings, a Guardian Children's Book of the Year 2022 and a Reading Agency Book of the Year 2022 pick. The Sin Eater's Daughter was the bestselling UK YA debut novel of 2015, and collectively her books have been nominated and shortlisted for numerous awards and accolades, including the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, the YA Book Prize, the Branford Boase, the Edgar Awards, the 2016 and 2019, 2021 and 2023 Carnegie medals, YALSA Best YA 2022, Eason's YA Book of the Month, and more. Her books have been published in sixteen countries to date. Melinda will lead our Writing YA workshop starting in January 2025.

Naomi Wood is a multi-disciplinary performance artist who creates work that incites riotous acts of joyful disobedience and celebrates empowerment and rebellion, merging the circus with storytelling and theatre performance with poetry. Her work has been published by Backlash Press, Ink Sweat and Tears, Unicornzine, Little Living Room, Train River Publishing and Dear Damsels. She has hosted the Hammer and Tongue poetry slam in Brighton and her one woman show Gobbess has played to sell-out audiences across the UK. She has an MA in Creative and Critical Writing from Sussex University. Naomi led our Spoken Word workshop in Summer 2023 and Dare Your Truth: Poetic Storytelling in Summer 2024.