Full List of Speakers for the 2026 Festival
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Adrian Tchaikovsky was born in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire, has practised law and now writes full time. He’s also studied stagefighting, perpetrated amateur dramatics and has a keen interest in entomology and tabletop games.
Adrian is the author of the critically acclaimed Shadows of the Apt series, the Echoes of the Fall series and other novels, novellas and short stories. Children of Time won the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award, Children of Ruin and Shards of Earth both won the British Science Fiction Award for Best Novel and The Tiger and the Wolf won the British Fantasy Award for Best Fantasy Novel.
Leigh Radford
Leigh Radford trained as a broadcast journalist. She produced and presented arts and entertainment content and documentaries for UK commercial radio, BBC Radio, Time Out, The Times and The Sun. A former book publicist, she is a 2023 graduate of Faber Academy. She is currently developing content for film and television through her production company, Kenosha Kickers. One Yellow Eye is her debut novel.
Naomi Ishiguro
Naomi Ishiguro was born in London in 1992. Her debut novel, Common Ground, was published by Tinder Press in the spring of 2021, and her collection of stories, titled Escape Routes, was published in the spring of 2020 (also by Tinder Press). She is a graduate of the University of East Anglia’s MFA Creative Writing Programme, and has worked as both a secondary school English teacher and a freelance creative writing teacher. She also spent a lovely two years in her early twenties working as a bookseller and bibliotherapist at Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights in Bath.
August Bloom
August Bloom writes magical novels from her cosy writing studio in Gloucestershire. She devours gentle fantasy stories alongside cinnamon buns and loves the cooler autumn months when she can curl up under a blanket with a good book. Her co-writer is a chronically clumsy Labrador who she explores the countryside with.
Emily Cooper
Emily Cooper is a published scientist with a Master’s degree in Biology and a lifelong obsession with the natural world. She lives near Manchester in a 330-year-old cottage, which she’s fairly certain is haunted, providing ample inspiration for her novels.
Stephen Howard
Stephen Howard (he/him) is an English novelist and short story writer from Manchester, now living in Cheshire with his wife, Rachel, and their daughter, Flo. An English Literature and Creative Writing graduate from the Open University, his work has been published by Lost Boys Press, The No Sleep Podcast, Factor Four Magazine, and others. He’s also published the comic fantasy novel Beyond Misty Mountain, and the three short story collections. A horror novella, This House Isn’t Haunted But We Are, was published by Wild Hunt Books in 2025, and a sci-fi / fantasy novel, An Invincible Summer, is coming via Infested Publishing late 2026.
Mark A. Radcliffe
Mark A. Radcliffe is the author of three novels, Gabriel’s Angel (2010) and Stranger Than Kindness (2013), both published by Bluemoose and Three Gifts (2023) published by époque press. And a collection of short stories, Superpowers (2020) published by Valley Press. Prior to that he has worked as a nurse, a health journalist/columnist and a senior lecturer in mental health practice and nursing and until recently ran the MA and MFA in Creative Writing at West Dean College of Arts and Conservation.
Rachel Grosvenor
Dr Rachel Grosvenor is a writer, editor, and writing coach, with a PhD, MA and BA in Creative Writing. She is the author of ‘The Finery’ (spotlighted in The Guardian), ‘The Birth of Ida’, and the bestselling ‘Witchborne’.
Heather G. Harris
Heather G. Harris is an Amazon top-100 best-selling author. Heather is a full-time fantasy writer and she is also blessed to be a mum to three gorgeous kids and a wilful Great Dane.
Hazel Hitchins
Hazel Hitchins is a writer (though she prefers the term “Story Monkey”) who spends her days having conversations with her imaginary friends, some of which she writes down. She lives in Wales with her normal family, normal(ish) cat, and entirely abnormal laundry pile.
Sam K Horton
Sam K Horton is a Cornwall-based author. Trained as a costume designer working in film, theatre and opera, he moved into visual art, always working with narratives, texts and stories. He began writing short stories as part of a creative project to create a fictional island called Eythin in 2019 and became a novelist by mistake. His first book, Gorse, is a story of magic and murder in an imagined 18th Century Cornwall where folklore is real—and deadly. Its sequel, Ragwort, was published in October 2025.
Lorraine Wilson
A conservation scientist and third culture Scot, Lorraine lives by the sea writing stories influenced by folklore and the wilderness. She has a PhD from the University of St. Andrews and is the author of several books, most recently the connected science fantasies We Are All Ghosts In The Forest and The Salt Oracle. Winner of two British Fantasy Awards and the Society of Authors ADCI Literary Prize, her books have also been finalists for the BSFA, BFA, Kavya and Saltire Awards, and twice winners of the SCKAwards. Lorraine has been stalked by wolves, caught the bubonic plague, and befriended pythons, but she now sticks to herding cats.
Catrin Cadogan
Catrin Cadogan is a writer from Wales whose writing has spanned middle grade and adult fiction, and whose short stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and shortlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award. She is a winner of a PEN International New Voices Award and has been named on Hay Festival’s ‘The Hay 30’ list. RED DRAGON SONG is her first romantasy. She lives in South Wales with her family – almost in reach of the wild edge of the sea.
Jan Foster / J.H. Foster
By day, Jan juggles consultancy work with her family, but by night she sneaks off, into the past. Her penchant for sprinkling history with magic is fuelled by coffee and Cadburys. When not writing, Jan takes her dogs and small monsters into the countryside, especially if there is a castle or historic building there with a cosy coffee shop in which to escape the rain of Manchester, England.
