We welcome new input – if anyone wants to contribute to The Bristol School of Writing, whatever your skills and interests, please do get in touch with us using the contact form below.
Editor
Justin Lyle has a BA in German and Russian language and literature from the University of Bristol, first class honours. He also helped his twin brother with a Master’s in Modern and Contemporary Literature at Birkbeck, and enjoys reading Granta and The London Review of Books. Justin has written political analysis journalism on Russia and the Caucasus, and worked in anti-corruption, ethnic minority rights, political risk assessment, humanitarian aid, social enterprise, corporate sustainability and documentary film internationally. He writes essays, reportage and poetry.
Production
Born on a prison hulk, Simon Clarke made an audacious bid for freedom at the age of five, taking refuge with a cut-throat band of river pirates who terrorised the waterways of East Anglia. Eventually back on dry land, he has worked variously at a nuclear plant, a midnight carnival and, lastly and most successfully, at a charming Cotswold tea room where he perfected his recipe for madeira cake. He lives alone with his cats, his grimoires and his memories somewhere in the south west of England. His fiction has been featured in the first Solar Press horror anthology, where one reviewer described it encouragingly as “bizarre” and “very weird”.
Partnerships
Siobhan Hosty has been a teacher of English in three schools. She met her husband, Ged, at The University of Ulster and they went together to London initially to work. Siobhan had a great time there watching a wide range of stunning theatre. She moved to Cardiff for a few years and enjoyed teaching one particular Year 10 class of which she had been warned. Initially she found them a delightful class and couldn’t quite grasp what the other teachers were talking about. Then the local police had a clampdown on truancy and so her classes suddenly doubled in size. She could then understand why the other teachers had warned her about that particular class! She feels that moving to Bristol to teach English in Clifton High School has been a good decision as she finds it such a great city. She enjoys developing her writing skills and hopes we will all continue to, together.
Review
Richard Craven is a British/Canadian who arrived in Bristol 20 years ago for an MA in Philosophy and stayed on for a PhD. Since quitting academia he has dedicated himself to writing formal verse and satirical literary fiction. He has written five novels, more sonnets than Shakespeare, two extended heroic couplet satires, and a full length Jacobean revenge tragedy. He writes mainly in English, sometimes in French, and very occasionally in Latin, and is a voracious reader of the English and French classical literary canons.
Angela Nansera is a published short story writer whose inspiration to write contemporary fiction comes from an innate passion to use storytelling to unravel the complexities of human attachments. The London-born, female Afro-British novelist’s love affair of storytelling began from aged nine when she won her first writing competition. The family car crash story set in the summer of 1977 was developed to later win two short story commendations: BBC Three’s memoir competition – ‘The Writing Lab’ (2007) – and as ‘Mr Sandman’ in Segora (2016). Her other published short stories include: ‘Mark of Approval’ (Bristol School of Writing Anthology 2025), ‘Crimson Rambler’ (Debut Magazine 2024), The Day I lost Sarah Jane and Found Her Again’ (MTP 2022), ‘Lost in Music’ (Segora 2019), ‘Borderline’ (Debut Magazine 2010), ‘Soul Survivor’ (first and second place in Cazart and Segora (2011)) and ‘The Proposal’ set on a plantation in Mississippi in 1865 (runner-up Cazart 2010, third place Debut Magazine 2011). Since graduating from her Masters in Creative Writing in 2013, Angela has also dedicated her time to complete her novel submission ‘SIN BIN’ a drama set largely in a boarding school in 1983, longlisted for Retreat West’s Novel competition in 2019.