Marilyn Longstaff
My fellow Tees Valley writers are just about the most supportive group of people I've worked with - genuine arts activists who believe that the arts are for all. Often they're scrabbling about for bits of funding, but they don't lose their passion or zeal Read more
Andy Croft
Teeside: a gold-rush Klondyke… a classic study in decline… a monastery perhaps, a staging post… a monument of burned-out cars and grass in praise of mighty Ozymandias ('Sunlight and Heat') Read more
Barbara Gamble
You only have to listen to Teessiders, to eavesdrop on a conversation in a coffee shop or a supermarket queue to find inspiration. I hope the characters in my novels are like that. Funny, touching, perceptive. Read more
Maureen Almond
For me it is the iron will; the steeliness of the people that moves me. Read more
Joanna Boulter
I’ve always had a soft spot for Victorian railway towns, with all that exuberant fancy tilework. My grandfather worked for Great Western Railway – God’s Wonderful Railway. He’d have felt as much at home in Darlington as I do. Read more
Bob Beagrie
The area now known as Tees Valley is a whirling mix of contradictions and contrasts that is all at once frustrating, fascinating, charming, beautiful, ugly and, despite efforts to constantly repackage it, just so very real. Read more
Gordon Hodgeon
The river’s invisible, licks along down there, hums its burden under crane feet, abstractions of the cranium, glass-and-chrome emporia, o my Boro Nova, an old cat sniffing out to the North Sea, an old-fashioned stink to it. ('Over the Border') Read more
Jo Colley
Darlington: railways, Quakers, the mighty Skerne washing supermarket trolleys majestically through the town. When we moved here long ago with one child and another coming, everyone was wearing a Frankie Says Relax t-shirt. I became a writer here. Read more
Tees Valley Writers
Here you can find profiles of professional writers that live and work in the Tees Valley. Many of the writers are freelancers who are willing to work in schools, run workshops, undertake residencies and consider other writing-related work opportunities. New Writing North can help you make contact with any of the writers if they don’t have direct links to their own websites on their profiles - just email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
A number of organisations offer advice on rates of pay for writers and on good practice issues around engaging and contracting writers. You can start at www.newwritingnorth.com
Maureen Almond
Maureen Almond is a poet, academic and writing teacher living in Yarm. She was born in Ferryhill, County Durham in 1945 and moved to Teesside at the age of two. Her childhood days were spent ‘below the railway’ in Thornaby, in the shadow of Head Wrightson’s Iron Foundry, (which acts as the backdrop for her poetry collection, The Works. She now lives in Yarm.
Katharine Banner
Katharine Banner is a poet who worked for some years on a dairy farm near Darlington and is now busy with a young son. She read psychology at York University and graduated in 1985. Her first published poem appeared in The Page - a former literary supplement of The Northern Echo - in 1993 and subsequently she has been published in magazines such as The Penniless Press, The North, Leviathan Quarterly, The New Writer and The Farmers' Weekly.
Bob Beagrie
Bob Beagrie is a poet, publisher and live literature programmer. He runs Ek Zuban, a small independent press with fellow poet Andy Willoughby, promotes new writers from the Tees Valley and runs international writing exchanges between the North East and Finland and The Hague.
Joanne Benford
Joanne was born and brought up in Hartlepool in 1971 where she now lives. Her life has been marked by variety, travelling the cradles of civilisation, being a one-time singer, pianist, artist, librarian and all-round seeker. She started writing professionally aged 20, and now regularly writes for several magazines. Her first book, Down By The Water, was shortlisted for the Raymond Williams Publishing Prize.
Joanna Boulter
Joanna Boulter is a Darlington-based poet, writing teaching and founder member of the Vane Women writing collective. She settled in Darlington in 1989 and is a founder member of Vane Women writing collective based at Darlington Arts Centre. In 1995 Joanna gained an MA in the History of Ideas from Northumbria University, and in 2002 she achieved a distinction in Newcastle University's MA in Writing Poetry.
Natalie Boxall
Natalie Boxall is a journalist and aspiring novelist from Middlesbrough. She’s been obsessed with writing since getting her first typewriter in her teens on which she wrote a cringeworthy teen novel and poems; the latter which won a Young Writer of the Year award from Writearound. Her prize was being taught by Julia Darling and Bob Beagrie, and since then, she’s tried to write every day.
Jo Colley
Jo Colley is a prose writer and poet who has settled in the North East. She has compensated for a rootless childhood by living in the north east of England for the last thirty years. A prose writer and poet, she has read her work and spoken word performance pieces in the north east, Liverpool, London and Finland. Her work has been published by Vane Women, Sand and Ek Zuban, and she has been translated into Finnish.
Andy Croft
Andy Croft is a Middlesbrough-based poet and prolific writer of books for teenagers. He lives in Middlesbrough, where he has been active in community-writing projects for many years. He has worked in hundreds of schools – primary, secondary and special needs. Writing Residencies include the Great North Run, the Hartlepool Headland, the Southwell Poetry Festival and HMP Holme House.
John Dean
John Dean is a writer of crime novels, and is a tutor and mentor. He is developing a career as a writer, with six crime novels already published by Robert Hale, of London. John is also a creative writing tutor, taking regular classes at venues including Darlington Arts Centre and is administrator for The Global Short Story competition, run by Darlington company Certys, of which he is a director, and which is backed by the arts centre.
Barbara Gamble
Born in Belfast, Barbara Gamble is a freelance journalist and has lived in Teesside for over twenty five years. She has written three novels and her first novel Out of Season was long-listed for the Booker Prize and published in paperback in Australia as well as in the UK. She has worked as a creative writer with young offenders in Durham and taught film studies at a Teesside college.
Gordon Hodgeon
Gordon Hodgeon is a poet who has been active in the literature and publishing scene. He is currently an editor at Mudfog Press.Born 1941 in Leigh, Lancashire, went from Leigh Grammar School to read English at Durham, then taught in the West Riding and Lancaster. Moved to Teesside in 1972 to work in the education service. A founder member of Brotton Writers' Workshop and of Hall Garth Poets.
Marion Husband
Marion Husband is a novelist and creative writing teaching living in Stockton on Tees. In 2003 Marion Husband’s graduated with distinction from the MA in Creative Writing at Northumbria University and received the Blackwell Prize for Best Performance. In 2005 her first novel, The Boy I Love, was published by Accent Press and in the same year she was awarded the inaugural Andrea Badenoch Prize for Fiction for Paper Moon.
Marilyn Longstaff
Marilyn Longstaff is a Darlington-based poet and member of the Vane Women writing, performing and publishing collective (www.vanewomen.co.uk). She got into writing by attending an evening class at Darlington Arts Centre in 1994, under the expert tuition of the poet Jackie Litherland, one of the founder members of Vane Women – a registered charity involved in a variety of community outreach work, particularly in rural areas; none of its members are paid for any of this work.
P.A. Morbid
P.A. Morbid is a Poet mainly, Editor of The Black Light Engine magazine, a showcase for the best writing and art in the North East and beyond. His writing is at times dark, witty and imbued with a questing spirituality – or not. He's either writing about the Human Condition – as viewed through the experiences of a somewhat flawed individual – or he is making it all up.
Rowena Sommerville
Rowena Sommerville is a children's writer and illustrator, who is also developing as a poet. She originally trained as an illustrator, and worked in educational publishing and children's television, and a variety of community projects. Rowena has had three children's books published (Century Hutchinson/ Red Fox) all of which she wrote and illustrated, and one of which (If I were a Crocodile) was featured in the BBC Words and Pictures programme - when the magic pencil showed you how to write a curly ‘C'!
Andy Willoughby
Andy Willoughby is a poet and playwright from Eston in Middlesbrough, who runs Ek Zuban with Bob Beagrie. He was Middlesbrough's poet laureate for 2003-04, resulting in the Mudfog pamphlet The Wrong California. His full collection of poems, Tough (Smokestack) came out in July 2005.
Annie Wright
Annie Wright is a poet and experienced workshop leader. Annie's hot first pamphlet collection Including Sex was published by The Bay Press in 1995. An original and scrupulous writer, her work is rich in sexual lyricism. The poems are sensual, and often frankly sexual, full of taut phrases and energetic explosions of imagery.