Astrid Alben is the author of Ai! Ai! Pianissimo (Arc Publications), Plainspeak (Prototype), Little Dead Rabbit (Prototype) and Klein dood konijn (PoëzieCentrum). Her translation of Anne Vegter’s Eiland berg gletsjer/Island mountain glacier received an English PEN Translates award (2022).

She has been described as ‘a new and original voice in English poetry, serious and uncompromising’ (R. V. Bailey).

Astrid is the co-founder and artistic director of the arts and sciences initiative PARS. She has curated and edited the Findings on… series and curated site-specific events that are a mixture of theatre, art installation and scientific experiment.

Astrid Alben is the Chair of Poetry London and Commissioning Editor for Literature in Translation for Prototype Publishing. 

Amanda Smyth is Irish Trinidadian, and author of four novels, Black Rock, A Kind of Eden, Fortune and Look at You.

Her first novel, Black Rock, won the Prix du Premier Roman Etranger, was nominated for an NAACP award, short listed for McKitterick Prize, and selected as an Oprah Winfrey Summer Read. Black Rock was chosen as one of Waterstones New Voices, and translated into several languages. Her second novel, A Kind of Eden, set in contemporary Trinidad, was published in 2013 and optioned in 2024 as a TV series. Fortune, her third novel, was shortlisted for Walter Scott prize 2022. Look at You, her fourth novel, was published in 2025.

Amanda’s fiction and poetry have appeared in New Writing, London Magazine, The Times Literary Supplement, Harvard Review and broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

Amanda teaches creative writing at Arvon, Skyros, Greece, and she is a Royal Literary Fellow.

Mez Packer is a novelist and memoirist with extensive experience in creative writing teaching and advocacy.

She has written two novels. Her first, Among Thieves, was nominated for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Authors’ Club First Novel Award. The Game is Altered was runner up in Sci-Fi Now’s book of the year. Her stories and articles have been published in Under the Radar and Mslexia and on the Writers’ Hub and in various anthologies.

Mez has been assistant professor at Coventry University and has taught at Arvon, Curtis Brown Creative and City Lit and is a tutor at the Skyros Writers’ Lab. She is also a freelance consultant with Sasolo (arts development and management) and a tutor for The Hidden Artist - a development platform dedicated to enhancing the careers of under-represented creatives.

Her third novel is currently on submission.