Rachelle Atalla is Scottish-Egyptian novelist, short story writer and screenwriter based in Glasgow. Her debut novel The Pharmacist will be published by Hodder & Stoughton in May 2022, with her second novel Livestock scheduled for the following year. Rachelle has been selected to participate in the 2021 Young Film Foundation Skye residency programme and will be working with BBC Film on her first feature length screenplay. Her short stories have been published widely in literary anthologies and she co-edits New Writing Scotland. Rachelle completed a Master’s in Creative Writing from the University of Aberdeen in 2014, and in 2015 was the recipient of a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award. 

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Jen Cooper is a poet based in Perthshire. Much of her work is inspired by the natural world and has been published in Rialto, Ambit, Northwords Now, Envoi, and New Writing Scotland.

She has an MLitt. and a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Aberdeen and is an Honorary Fellow of the WORD Centre for Creative Writing. In 2016 she was recipient of The Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award and is currently working on a collection set mainly in the Cairngorms.

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Hannah Nicholson is originally from Brae in Shetland, but now lives in Aberdeen and has previously lived in Glasgow. Her writing often features Shetland dialect, although not exclusively. She has been published in Gutter, Northwords Now, Causeway/Cabhsair and Silk & Smoke. Although ordinarily a prose writer, she has written over 90 poems during lockdown. Her work sometimes incorporates local folklore and explores themes around mental health. She studied for a Master’s degree in Creative Writing at University of Aberdeen and was a New Writers Award winner in 2021.

 

Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award winner 2021, Gillian Shearer is a writer and poet based in North-East Scotland. After training as a nurse and working in the NHS, she studied literature and for an MLitt. in Creative Writing at the University of Aberdeen. She writes in both English and Scots, her work appearing in Southlight, Causeway/Cabhsair, Lallans and Northwords Now. As a child of the seventies Gillian loves writing about those times: Glam Rock, Crackerjack...even the Bay City Rollers!  She is currently working on a collection of short stories that includes all of the above.