Ordinary people are extraordinary. We can all aspire to decency, generosity, respect, honesty – and the power of love (all kinds of love!) can help us grow into our best selves. I write stories about ‘ordinary’ people finding their answers in themselves and each other. I write about friends and lovers, and the families we create for ourselves. I explore the depth and the meaning, the fun and the possibilities, in ‘everyday’ experiences and relationships. I believe that embodying these things is how we can live our lives more fully. Creative works help us each find our own clarity and our own joy. Readers bring their hearts and souls to reading, just as authors bring their hearts and souls to writing – and together we make a whole. Julie Bozza. Quirky. Queer. Sincere.

I grew up in southern England, but now live in Somerset, within an hour’s drive of the villages where two of my great-great-great-grandparents were born. I have worked in an eclectic range of libraries over the years but am in fact a thwarted medievalist with a strong arts background. I have been writing fiction for over thirty years, exploring the lives of people who are on the margins in one way or another, and how the power of love and language can break down the walls that we build round ourselves.

Bryn Hammond lives in a coastal town in Australia, where she likes to write while walking in the sea. She grew up on ancient and medieval epics, the Arthur cycle original and modern, nineteenth-century novelists, particularly Russian and French, and out-of-fashion poets, namely Algernon Swinburne. Always a writer – to the neglect of other paths in life that might have been more sensible – she found the perfect story in The Secret History of the Mongols, a thirteenth-century prose and verse account of Chinggis Khan. Her Amgalant series is a version and interpretation of this original. Voices from the Twelfth-Century Steppe is her craft essay, a case study of creative engagement with a primary source. Other work in The Knot Wound Round Your Finger (Bell Press), Ergot., Queer Weird West Tales (LIBRAtiger), New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine.

Vanessa Mulberry has been reading and writing since she learnt to read and write. She has been an MM romance reader for a decade now and took up writing the genre because she loves happy endings and, ahem, happy endings. Her hobbies include Gin and Tonic. She lives in Buckinghamshire (which is significantly less posh than it sounds) with her long-suffering husband and their adorable daughter.