Winners 2005

Peter Armstrong

Working in the NHS as a nurse, therapist, supervisor & educator both informed and competed with Peter’s work as a poet; when push came to shove it tended to win the competition.

The Time to Write award enabled him to take extended leave from that work starting to walk to Camino route to Santiago de Compostela. The first part of that break got him started on the poems that made up the core of his collection, The Book of Ogham, and the overall experience led to his semi retirement from clinical work in order to concentrate on writing.

Chaz Brenchley

Chaz Brenchley has been making a living as a writer since he was eighteen. He is the author of nine thrillers, most recently Shelter and two fantasy series, The Books of Outremer and Selling Water by the River. As Daniel Fox he has published a Chinese-based fantasy series, beginning with Dragon in Chains, as Ben Macallan, an urban fantasy, Desdæmona.

A British Fantasy Award winner, he has also published books for children and more than 500 short stories in various genres. His time as crimewriter-in-residence on a sculpture project in Sunderland resulted in the collection Blood Waters. His first play, A Cold Coming, was performed and then toured in 2007. He is a prizewinning ex-poet, and has been writer in residence at the University of Northumbria. He was Northern Writer of the Year 2000.

Chaz has recently married and moved from Newcastle to California, with two squabbling cats and a famous teddy bear.

Website: www.chazbrenchley.co.uk
Blog: http://desperance.livejournal.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/ChazBrenchley

Selected publications
Shelter (Hodder, 1999)
Dragon in Chains (Del Rey Books, 2009)
Desdæmona (Solaris, 2011)

Sue Frost

Sue was a journalist and novelist living and working in Whitley Bay. A former agony aunt for Woman magazine, she published two novels, Redeem the Time and The Language of Nightingales.

Her award was to support her to develop her novel in progress, Salt,  a departure from her previous work in both style and content which sadly remained unfinished at her death in 2011.

Paul Bodie

Paul Bodie was born in Glasgow but has lived in Newcastle for the past 15 years. He won a Northern Promise Awards in 2005, which helped to support him develop his first novel, Mugs.

Mark Hindle

Mark lives in Newcastle upon Tyne. His short story, ‘The Bankruptcy of Phillip H Stone’, was a runner-up in the New Writing North/The Journal Fresh Fiction short story competition in 2004. His award was to support him to complete his first novel.

Nell Mcgrath

Nell McGrath is a GP from Northumberland who graduated from Northumbria University’s creative writing MA in 2003. She has won the Marie Claire/Virago Short Story Competition and the Sense of Mischief Children’s Short Story Competition, was longlisted for the Fish Short Story Prize and has had short stories published. She is currently working on her first novel, The Story Library of the Saints, a novel about a young woman who comes to believe that she is a saint after surviving a terrorist bomb blast. The initial work on this novel has been recognised by a Northern Writers’ Award from New Writing North, and the New Writing Partnership, in which she was runner-up in the fiction category.

Anne Ryland

Anne Ryland’s second poetry collection, The Unmothering Class (Arrowhead Press, 2011), has been selected for New Writing North’s Read Regional Campaign 2012. Her first collection, Autumnologist, was shortlisted for The Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2006. Her poems are widely published in magazines and anthologies, and in 2009 she won first prize in the Kent and Sussex Poetry Competition. Recurrent themes in her poetry include the northern coastline, myths of the north, winter, letters, stitches, the human body and genetic inheritance, as well as the stories passed down within families.

Anne was born and brought up in Essex. After studying at the universities of Bristol and Leeds, she lived in London for a number of years before moving to Berwick-upon-Tweed in 1999. She gained a distinction in the MA in writing poetry at Newcastle University in 2002, and received a Northern Promise Award from New Writing North in 2005. Formerly a secondary school teacher of German and a tutor of adult literacy, Anne now works as a freelance tutor of English and creative writing, running writing workshops in libraries and other community settings in Northumberland and the Scottish Borders. She particularly enjoys promoting writing for health and wellbeing.

Selected Publications
Autumnologist (Arrowhead Press, 2006)
The Unmothering Class (Arrowhead Press, 2011)

Dan Smith

Growing up, Dan Smith led three lives. In one he survived the day-to-day humdrum of boarding school, while in another he travelled the world, finding adventure in the padi-fields of South East Asia and the jungles of Brazil. But the third life he lived in a world of his own, making up stories…which is where some people say he still lives most of the time!

Now settled in Newcastle with his wife and two children, Dan writes stories to share with both adults and children.

Dan’s debut novel for adults, Dry Season, was shortlisted for the Author’s Club Best First Novel Award 2011. His debut novel for younger readers, My Friend The Enemy, was long listed for the Branford Boase Award 2014, and short-listed for the Historical Association Young Quills 2013. His 2015 novel Big Game is based on a major movie starring Samuel L Jackson, and his most recent novel for younger readers, Boy X, has won The Essex Book Award 2017, The Phoenix Book Award 2017, and the Coventry Inspiration Book Award 2017.

Dan Smith

Maurice Suckling

Following his NWN Award Maurice’s debut collection of short stories, Photocopies of Heaven, was published in 2006 by critically acclaimed small publisher Elastic Press, and was long-listed by the British Fantasy Awards for the best single author anthology that year.

Since then Maurice has continued to write predominantly for video games.

In 2011 he was BAFTA nominated for co-writing the first series of Alphablocks for BBC TV. (He didn’t win.)

Maurice Suckling

http://twitter.com/Human3730930196

Anna Mason

Born in Carlisle, Anna Mason finished university in Sheffield with a plan to travel while paying off student debts. She taught English in state schools in Taiwan, and signed up to a glamour modelling agency in London upon her return to the UK. For a couple of years she divided her time between London and Paris, where she was a dancer at Stringfellows nightclub. In 2003, Anna moved to the French Alps to run a mountain biking company with a partner. She trained in massage therapy, treating skiers and bikers and working in an Alpine spa.

Anna returned to Darlington in 2004. In 2005 she won a Northern Promise Award for a story she had written about the often funny and dramatic experiences she had living in Montmartre, Paris, with a group of other dancers. Also that year, she had a son, Charlie. Her job as a massage therapist for an agency specialising in the entertainments industry took her to music venues in the North East. After periods living in Mallorca and California, they currently live in Darlington, where Anna works as a spa therapist and is training to be a journalist.

The last novel she attempted was a real-life crime memoir of Marvin Herbert, an ex-armed robber who was shot five times in the street in Marbella in 2009, and survived.

Yvette Hawkins

Yvette Hawkins is a visual artist, arts project manager and travelling curator. Her work is driven by processes using paper as a sculptural medium which combines traditional craft techniques, such as folding, cutting, printing, stitching and constructing to explore the environments of both art and craft. At the time of the award, Yvette was studying fine art at Newcastle University. She began writing in 2004 when she was studying textile design at Glasgow School of Art. Her bursary was to support her to develop her poetry.

www.yvette-hawkins.blogspot.co.uk

Elliott Kerrigan

Elliott Kerrigan lives in Cramlington in Northumberland. He studied English and film at the University of Northumbria and then went on to study film and video production at the Surrey Institute of Art and Design, where he wrote and directed a short film which featured Sir Ian McKellen. His award was to support him to develop his first collection of poetry.

Marion Husband

Winner of the first Andrea Badenoch Prize for Fiction in 2005 for Paper Moon, Marion graduated with distinction and won the Blackwell Prize for Best Performance for the MA in creative writing at Northumbria University in 2003. Her first novel, The Boy I Love, was published in July 2005 to much critical acclaim. Its sequel, Paper Moon, was published in 2006 and followed by Say You Love Me and The Good Father in 2007. Marion is married with two children and lives in the Tees Valley.

www.marionhusband.com