After fifteen years in engineering, rather than have a mid-life crisis, Peter Ray Allison became a freelance writer. Peter's work has been published by the BBC, The Guardian, The Independent and many others. In pursuit of cutting-edge stories, Peter has interviewed Professor Freeman Dyson, stepped inside a fusion reactor and asked awkward questions of several government departments. Peter is also the managing editor of Geek Pride and co-host of the Geek Pride podcast. 

Rosie Andrews was born and grew up in Liverpool, the third of twelve children. She studied History at Cambridge before becoming an English teacher. Her debut novel, The Leviathan, was an instant Sunday Times bestseller, going on to become one of the bestselling debut hardbacks of 2022, and has been shortlisted for the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award, the HWA Debut Crown Award and the Books Are My Bag Readers Award for Fiction. She lives in Hertfordshire with her husband and daughter.

Photo credit: Sally Masson

Darrell Buxton is the editor of 'We Belong Dead' magazine, and has also edited various books on horror movies. Darrell is currently working alongside the Treasured Films Blu-ray label, contributing filmed bonus features and text essays, and will be appearing soon as an onscreen 'talking head' in Jasper Sharp's documentary 'Splatterfest Exhumed', all about the legendary 1990 all-night film show at London's Scala Cinem 

Matthew Cheeseman is a writer, researcher and Professor of Writing and Folklore at the University of Derby. He co-convene the Folklore Without Borders research network, which seeks to embed greater diversity into UK folklore and folkloristics. He is the Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded Dracula Returns to Derby. He posts as @eine on X. 

Alex Davis does a lot of things in writing, including creating and co-ordinating the UK Ghost Story Festival, now entering its fifth year. He works as a lecturer for the University of Derby and De Montfort University in both Creative Writing and Media Studies, and has run writing workshops in a wide range of capacities over the last twenty years. Currently he is also working on ongoing events such as Winter Haunts, Darkness in the Fields and the year-long Dracula Returns to Derby project. 

Robert Edgar is a writer and academic. He is Professor of Writing and Popular Culture in the York Centre for Writing at York St John University, UK. His publications include Screenwriting (2009), Music, Memory and Memoir (2019), Science Fiction for Survival (2019), Adaptation for Scriptwriters (2019), Thomas Hardy and the Folk Horror Tradition (2023), Venue Stories (2023), The Routledge Companion to Folk Horror (2023 )and Horrifying Children: Hauntology and the Legacy of Children’s Television (2024).  He is currently writing on Alan Garner, hauntology and memoir, and the 18th century roots of folk horror. He is a series editor for the forthcoming Spectres, Hauntings and Horrors series with Bloomsbury. He is the convener of the Hauntology and Spectrality Research Group. 

Sarah Elliott is a writer, spoken word artist, poet and self-published author
(Warrior Wisdom Sun 2022, United Under One Sun 2023). She regularly hosts writing hours and monthly flash fiction workshops with the London Writers’ Salon. Her articles, stories, and author interviews can be found on The Horror Tree website. Her work has been published in Red Rose Thorns magazine, Writing in Community anthology and Hope is a Group Project.

Sarah is currently writing a tarot-inspired collection of flash fiction, short prose and poetry. She documents her writing journey in her Substack newsletter, A Writer's Life. Sarah serves as the interviews coordinator for the Horror Tree website and is also an Editor for Trembling With Fear (Horror Tree magazine). She is a member of The British Fantasy Society.

Based in Nottingham, England, Sarah lives with her cat, Bella. A speculative fiction enthusiast, she enjoys books, films and TV series in the genre. More from Sarah here:
https://sarahelliott-writer.carrd.co/ 

https://www.instagram.com/Writingforlight

Alex Foulkes was born in smoky Stoke-on-Trent and grew up in the Staffordshire Moorlands. She has a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing. As a kid, she spent much of her time reading in her school library; as a grown-up, she now loves visiting school libraries and talking about everything books!

Apart from reading and writing stories, Alex’s favourite hobbies include lurking in the shadows, hanging upside-down from ceilings, and hissing at the sun. She still lives in the Moorlands, in a town that seems to be foggy for three-quarters of the year.

Julie Malone is the author of two series and several short stories. Her Somerset-based five-volume fantasy adventures, ‘The Winterne Series’, with a linked, fully researched, historical prequel, received media reviews comparing her imaginative writing to J R R Tolkein, Philip Pullman and J K Rowling. The second series comprises six animal stories for younger children. Currently, she working on an undersea-based crime novel due for release in 2025.

Since 2006 Julie has organised book and arts festivals, and founded an annual Nottinghamshire-wide writing competition for children, which ran for 13 years. She works with local community groups, play organisers, gives creative writing workshops in schools, libraries and community groups on various topics, including, of course, Ghost story writing.

To contact Julie, please email her at jaemalone.author@gmail.com, visit her website www.jaemalone.co.uk, or contact her through her Jae Malone Facebook page

Julie is a member of the Society of Authors (SoA) and the National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE) and has a current, Enhanced DBS Certificate.

Alison Moore’s debut novel, The Lighthouse, was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize and the National Book Awards, winning the McKitterick Prize. Her fifth novel, The Retreat, was published in 2021. She's also published a trilogy for children, beginning with Sunny and the Ghosts. Her short stories have been included in Best British Short Stories and Best British Horror and broadcast on BBC Radio. She's published two collections: The Pre-War House and Other Stories, whose title story won the New Writer Novella Prize, and Eastmouth and Other Stories. She's also the author of five Nightjar Press chapbooks, her latest being The Junction (2024). Her website is www.alison-moore.com.

Photo credit: Beth Walsh Photography

Dr Tim Rideout holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of Lincoln. He is interested in the Gothic mode as a political literary form and the way it engages with societal phenomena such as neoliberalism, the climate crisis and the migrant and refugee experience. His book, ‘Gothic Precarity: Fear and Anxiety in Twenty-First-Century’ is due to be published by the University of Wales Press in the summer of 2025. Tim’s love of the Gothic can be attributed to childhood obsessions with Doctor Who and the Fontana Books of Ghost Stories, obsessions that remain in place to this day. 

Megan Taylor’s most recent novel is an eerie psychological thriller, The Therapist’s Daughter (Bloodhound Books, 2024) and her four previous novels include a haunted house mystery, We Wait (Eyrie Press, 2019). Her short fiction is collected in The Woman Under the Ground (Weathervane Press, 2014) and further short stories can be found in many places including Weird Horror and Gone: An Anthology of Crime Stories. Her short story, The Grandchildren, was released as a chapbook single from Nightjar Press in 2024. Megan lives in Nottingham, where she's been running creative writing courses and workshops for over ten years. For more information, please visit www.megantaylor.info.