Katrina Naomi’s fourth poetry collection, Battery Rocks, (Seren, 2024) is the winner of the Arthur Welton Award from the Society of Authors. She is a recipient of the Keats-Shelley Prize and her poetry has appeared on Poems on the Underground, BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, Open Country and Poetry Please, and in The TLS, The Poetry Review and Modern Poetry in Translation.

Beth Sherman’s writing has been published in more than 100 literary magazines, including Flash Frog, Gone Lawn, Tiny Molecules, 100 Word Story, Fictive Dream, and Bending Genres. She’s a submissions editor at Smokelong Quarterly and the winner of Smokelong’s 2024 Workshop prize. Her work is featured in Best Microfiction 2024 and the upcoming Best Small Fictions 2025.

Yumna Sadiq is a visual artist whose work blends poetry, myth, and visual storytelling. Her art explores the intersection of fantasy, ecological change, and ancestral voice. She is currently developing a collection of hybrid poems and visual narratives. Our interview with Yumna delves into questions about her process and sheds light on the creation of her beautiful piece, ‘The Leek-Greens’ Hymns’.

Sravya Raju is originally from and based in Cornwall. She bimbled across the Tamar for a BA (Hons) in English Literature, French, and History of Art at Durham University, then a MA in English: Issues in Modern Culture at UCL. She returned home to work in the creative sector and has written bits and bobs along the way – scripts, copywriting, poems, and research papers among them.

Dawn Tasaka Steffler (she/her) is an Asian-American writer from Hawaii who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She was a Smokelong Quarterly Emerging Writer Fellow, winner of the Bath Flash Fiction Award, and was selected for both the 2024 Wigleaf Top 50 long list and 2025 Best Small Fictions. Her stories appear in Pithead Chapel, Fractured Lit, Moon City Review, The Forge and more. She is working on a novella-in-flash.

Jackie Taylor is a writer of short fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction, based in Cornwall. Her collection of short stories, Strange Waters, was published by Arachne Press in 2021 and her short story ‘Another Place’ was included in Inkfish’s anthology Cornwall in Short. She has a Master of Letters with Distinction in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow. We talk to her about the process of crafting her writing and what inspires her in the everyday.

Tim Hannigan is the author of several narrative history books including Murder in the Hindu Kush, which was shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Prize; Raffles and the British Invasion of Java which won the 2013 John Brooks Award. His most recent book is The Granite Kingdom (Head of Zeus, 2023). We talk to him about fiction, travel writing and inspirations drawn from Cornish landscape and folklore.

Rob Magnuson Smith is the author of The Gravedigger and Scorper, described by the Independent on Sunday as ‘an odd, original, darkly comic novel… Kafka crossed with Flann O’Brien’. His third novel is Seaweed Rising. Rob’s short fiction has appeared in Granta, the Guardian, Ploughshares and elsewhere. He has won the Elizabeth Jolley Award and been longlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award. We talk to him about inspirations, writing, and teaching.

Shelley Trower worked as a Professor of English Literature at the University of Roehampton before returning to Cornwall. Books include Senses of Vibration (2012), Rocks of Nation (2015), and Sound Writing (2023). Shelley now works with libraries, and since leaving academia has published short stories including ‘Seagulls’ in Litro Magazine (nominated for Pushcart in 2023), and is currently funded by Arts Council England to develop her novel writing. We talk to her about writing, both creative and academic.

Tom Vowler’s short story collection, The Method, won the inaugural Scott Prize and the Edge Hill Readers’ Prize. His debut novel, What Lies Within, is a psychological suspense set on Dartmoor, and his second, That Dark Remembered Day, is meditation on fatherhood, war and the natural world. Tom is an associate lecturer at Plymouth University. Dazzling the Gods is his latest collection of stories, and Every Seventh Wave is his most recent novel. We talk to him about the short form.

Emma Timpany’s publications include short story collections Three Roads and The Lost of Syros, a novella Travelling in the Dark, and the anthology Cornish Short Stories: A Collection of Contemporary Cornish Writing. Emma’s writing has won awards including the Hall and Woodhouse DLF Writing Prize and been published in journals internationally. We talk about short stories and the process of editing a collection.

D. Parker has a keen interest in experimental writing and has an MA in Creative Writing. Her debut pamphlet, Rush, was published by Bullshit Lit Mag + Press in February 2023. We talk to D. about her visual and textual work, her day to day process, her main inspirations and influences, how she came to create hybrid and experimental work, what it’s like editing Needle Poetry, Dadaism and Oulipo, and what she’s up to next.

Graham Mort is emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at Lancaster University, and a prolific writer and poet. ‘The Prince’ won the Bridport short fiction prize in 2005 and his short story collection, Touch, won the Edge Hill Prize in 2010. A further collection, Terroir, appeared in 2015 and Like Fado and Other Stories, was published by Salt in 2020. We talk to him about short fiction, flash fiction, and what inspires his writing.

Kathy Fish has written and published over 200 short stories and flash pieces. Her fifth collection, Wild Life: Collected Works from 2003-2018, is now in its 3rd print run with Matter Press and she teaches a highly successful series of online workshops. We talk about her favourite authors and influences, the difference between writing flash fiction, prose poetry and short stories, and the process of putting together a collection.