The Little Felton Book Festival

A.D. Bergin

A. D. Bergin was born in Northumberland and raised on Tyneside. He graduated from Cambridge University with a first class degree in History, since when he has worked as an archaeologist, historian, researcher, postman, roofer, builder and barman. 

You can see Andrew at our Tales of Dark Northumberland event on Friday 28th March.

katharine tiernan

Katharine Tiernan is a writer and nature-lover. She grew up close to the dramatic coastline of North Northumberland and continues to draw inspiration from its history and landscape. Katharine writes fiction, both short stories and novels. Her novel Cuthbert of Farne, the first of her north-east trilogy, was published in March 2019 followed by Place of Repose and A New Heaven and a New Earth. She has recently completed a new novel, Star of the Sea, based on the C18 history of her family. 

You can see Katharine at The Little Felton Book festival on Saturday 29th March.

kimberley adams

Kim had her first work published as a teenager when writing happy ever after stories for teen magazines. Then as a poor student she progressed to short stories for women which didn’t always have a happy ending (as we all well know!) Life and work then got in the way until the last few years, when Kim found a re-ignited love for writing, and was shortlisted by Penguin in a Romantic Comedy competition which gave her the confidence to push forward with the book that became Love Lindisfarne. Kim has since written the follow up Love Beyond Lindisfarne and both books are amongst the highest customer rated romantic comedies on Amazon

bea davenport

Bea Davenport is the writing name of former BBC and newspaper journalist Barbara Henderson. She drew on her experiences as a journalist for her first novel, In Too Deep, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Luke Bitmead Bursary. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Newcastle University. The children’s novel written as part of the PhD, The Serpent House, was shortlisted for the 2010 Times/Chicken House Award. She lives in the Northumberland border town of Berwick upon Tweed with her partner and children.

lucy roth

Lucy Roth is a writer with a love of flawed characters and tales from the darker side of life. She has a passion for mental health awareness, music and nostalgia. Her first work of fiction, a dark comedy called The Twenty Seven Club, explores music fandom, mental health and media sensationalism. Her second novel, Parklife (the sequel to The Twenty Seven Club), delves into addiction, recovery, friendship and hope, and is set against a backdrop of Northern life and 90s Brit Pop. Lucy’s third novel, a feminist comedy entitled No Worries If Not! was published in summer 2023 by Harper North. When Sally Killed Harry is her debut thriller novel.

tony glover

Tony Glover is an award winning writer and film-maker, born in Northumberland.

His BBC Radio play Just a Trim won a Sony Radio Award and earned him the title of BBC North Playwright of the Year. Tony has also won the first Northern Echo New Novelist of the Year award.

Tony has written for television and stage including Year of the Tiger (ITV), Chase Me I’m Chocolate (staged in Dartington); Slappers (staged at the Unity Theatre Liverpool) and The Stars that Surround Us (Newcastle Playhouse). His first film, Posh Monkeys, won a Royal Television Society award and the IAC International Film & Video Festival Gold Seal Award. It was promoted by the British Council at international film festivals. Irene’s Story, a documentary about bi-polar disorder, won a Millennium Award.

fiona veitch smith

Fiona Veitch Smith is a lover of Golden Age mysteries and historical fiction and has been shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger. She has worked as a journalist, a university lecturer and a communications manager, and mentors new novelists. She grew up in Northumberland, then spent her teens and twenties in South Africa. She now lives in Newcastle upon Tyne.

tjH boggis

Thomas is as UK based video game designer and scriptwriter with credits on such franchises as Driver, The Crew, Assassin’s Creed, Ghost Recon, Far Cry and Watch_Dogs. He studied Creative Writing at University of Cumbria and Computer Games Design at Teesside University before taking a role in the games industry. He has been writing in his spare time for as long as he can remember and wants nothing more than for his work to be enjoyed by as many people as possible.

kay wilson

Kay did stand-up comedy for two years after a brain injury and The Stand-Up Mam novel is inspired by her experience. She describes it as empowering and inspiring as well as terrifying! Kay lives in North East England and is married with two grown-up children. Kay loves uplifting and funny fiction and the occasional scary film, which usually has her waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.

kirsty cooper

Kirsty Cooper grew up in Guernsey before moving to England to study Primary Education. After 6 years of teaching, she stepped out of the classroom to focus on mumming and writing. Kirsty has spent the last 8 years as a children’s author, writing picture books for an educational publisher where she combines her passion for writing with her commitment to education. She loves writing fun, silly rhyming stories that are packed full of opportunities for language development. Kirsty is also a novelist, writing psychological thrillers in her spare time with her writing partner, Steve Johnson. Their debut novel What You Don’t Remember was published in 2021 and they are currently working on their next book. Kirsty lives in beautiful Northumberland with her husband, two children and oft-woofing mini schnauzer, Otto.

sue reed

Sue Reed lives in rural Northumberland where a love of nature informs her work. She had a career in teaching, writing curricula and sensory dramas for children with severe learning difficulties, then ran her own business upcycling waste wool knitwear as The Woolly Pedlar. In 2019 she studied for her MA in Creative Writing at Newcastle University. She writes about sustainable living at The Bridge Cottage Way. The Rewilding of Molly McFlynn is her debut novel.

wendy avery-stucker

Wendy Avery-Stucker is a Northumbrian artist living in Warkworth who draws inspiration from the beauty, history and heritage of this wonderful landscapr and its unique character. She has created a series of colouring books which reflect the drama and passion that make Northumberland so special.

Wendy studied graphic design, a discipline she has used throughout a successful creative career and now works independently as an artist and designer.

harry gallagher

Harry Gallagher is a widely published poet and performer, with many books to his name, the most recent being ‘Northumberland: The Sound Of A Landscape’, with the Felton-based artist MiE Fielding. Harry has performed all over the UK and overseas, and has completed poetry commissions for the BBC, Northern Rail and Great North Museums (Hancock & Discovery). He is very much looking forward to reading at The Little Felton Book Festival!

carrie mcgovern

Carrie is a women’s fiction and contemporary romance author based in the UK. She writes relatable fiction with strong female characters. Her books have a strong emphasis on friendship and female empowerment.

Carrie has been writing for an audience since the age of sixteen and has a BA(Hons) in Communication Studies, specialising in Journalism. It is only recently, through the love of reading, that she has taken up writing again.

She is married with two boys and a cat.
As well as reading she enjoys binge watching crime dramas and growing random plants.

ellie white

Ellie White was born and raised in Sunderland in the North East of England and is a proud Mackem!

She lives in Houghton-Le-Spring with her husband and two young children. She is a lover of chocolate, rom-coms, musicals and anything Disney.

Her debut Rom-Com, Love & London, published in ebook, paperback and Kindle Unlimited on the 2nd April 2021.

fiona erskine

A professional engineer with forty years of international manufacturing experience, Fiona’s first job after graduating from Cambridge University, was in the factory described in Phosphate Rocks. As a female engineer, she is often the lone female representative in board meetings, cargo ships, night-time factories and offshore oil rigs. Her first novel, The Chemical Detective, was published by Oneworld and shortlisted for the Specsavers Debut Crime Novel Award 2020.

ali rowland

Ali Rowland is a poet and author from Northumberland. Her poetry is sometimes about her own mental health issues and sometimes about the world in general. She is assisted in her endeavours by a wonderful husband and a beautiful border terrier. Ali won the Hexham Poetry Competition in 2023 and her stories and poems have been published in numerous journals including Dreich Magazine, The Frogmore Papers, The Northumbrian, Green Ink Press, The Open Journal of Arts and Letters, The Amphibian Press, Amsterdam Quarterly and Obsessed with Pipework.

richie mccaffery

Richie McCaffery is the author of a number of poetry pamphlets as well as three full collections from Nine Arches Press (Cairn and Passport) and Shoestring Press (Summer / Break). He is a teacher, literary critic and doctor of Scottish literature, his monograph being Scotland’s Harvest: Scottish Poetry and World War Two (Brill, 2023). His latest poetry collection – Skail – is due later this year from New Walk Editions. 

catherine ayers

Catherine Ayres is a teacher and poet from Alnwick. Her first collection, Amazon, was published in 2016 and she has recently published a pamphlet, Janus, both by Indigo Dreams Press. Catherine has a PhD in Creative Practice from Northumbria University, which focuses on Roman women living in the forts on Hadrian’s Wall. 

tony williams

Tony Williams is roaming the earth. The poems in Hawthorn City record the tales we tell ourselves to make a home in the lives we find ourselves living. They are songs to family, to stone and outlawry and refusal, and to the fevered memory which reaches back beyond birth, past early modern witches and shepherds songs, past medieval chronicles and Icelandic sagas, to the ancient city-states, homely and hellish, which part of the modern imagination still inhabits. Travelling darker and deeper towards the state which is both origin and grave, this grotesque comedy of a book intensifies into a bizarre, baroque vision of the world and our place in it.

linda france

Linda France was born in Wallsend, Newcastle upon Tyne, and now lives near Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland.

Her ten full-length poetry collections include: The Toast of the Kit-Cat Club (Bloodaxe 2005), a biography in verse of the 18th century traveller and writer Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; book of days, a year renga, with ceramic fragments by Sue Dunne (Smokestack 2009); Reading the Flowers (Arc 2016), longlisted for the inaugural Laurel Prize; The Knucklebone Floor (Smokestack 2022), Winner of the 2022 Laurel Prize, and Startling (New Writing North & Faber 2022).

Linda also edited the acclaimed anthology Sixty Women Poets (Bloodaxe 1993), a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. She has published several pamphlets. The most recent is Took My Way Down, Like a Messenger, to the Deep (Blueprint 2023).

ann ball

Ann Ball is an author of books reflecting her experience in the complementary therapy world spanning nearly three decades. She enjoys writing poetry, readings, meditations and training courses. Her books enrich her women’s circles that she runs to this present day in person, online and at residential retreats in the UK.