Durham Writes

Durham Writes will be delivered by Producer Amy Lord, Writer in Residence Katharine Goda, and Creative Writing Mentor Anna Woodford

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  Amy Lord

  Amy Lord is a novelist and short story writer from Middlesbrough. She is the author of dystopian novel, The Disappeared, which won a Northern Writers Award and was longlisted in The Bath Novel Award.

  She also writes short speculative fiction inspired by the changing post-industrial landscapes of North East England. She was a recent finalist in the Mslexia Short Story Competition and the Dinesh Allirajah Prize for Short Fiction. Her stories have appeared in various magazines and anthologies. She is currently writer-in-residence for the Crossing the Tees Festival and is part of the judging panel for the Curae Prize for writer-carers.

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  Katharine Goda

  Katharine Goda is an award-winning poet, socially engaged creative practitioner and producer based in the North East. Her work has appeared widely in the UK and beyond and received an Arts Council England Developing Your Creative Practice and a Northern Writers Award. Her first collection, Safety Measures Against the Sea, was published in 2023 by Vane Women Press. Katharine believes passionately in creating safe and supportive spaces where everyone can find their voice through the arts. She develops creative writing projects, often combined with film, photography, animation, printing, podcasts or music, with a diverse range of people from schools, charities and community groups to passersby. She relishes creating alongside people, especially those who haven’t had many opportunities to play in, experiment with and explore the arts, believing wholeheartedly in the power of words and ideas to challenge, include and inspire.

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  Anna Woodford

  Anna Woodford’s third poetry book is Everything is Present (Salt, 2025). She has won an Eric Gregory Award, an Authors’ Foundation Award, a Leverhulme residency, a PBS recommendation and the Ledbury and Wigtown poetry competitions. Her poetry has been well reviewed in the TLS and Grazia among others. She is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow and teaches poetry and creative writing in a variety of settings including universities and recovery colleges. www.annawoodford.co.uk