Katrina Porteous was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, to parents from North East England, and grew up in County Durham, where she attended Durham High School for Girls. She graduated from Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 1982 with a double first in…

Anne Stevenson, inaugural winner of the Northern Rock Writers Award in 2002, was born in England of American parents in 1933 and educated in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where her father was professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan. After…

Tom Paulin (b. 1949) is a poet, essayist, editor and lecturer, and a regular panellist on the BBC’s Newsnight Review. He won the Somerset Maugham award for his first Faber collection, A State of Justice, and was awarded a NESTA…

Denise Riley (b. 1948) is active across the full range of poetic life – poet, essayist, teacher, editor, researcher – and beyond, with her interests extending to politics, history, philosophy, feminist theory and visual art. She lectures at the University…