About the Society

Management Committee

Tom Holland (Chair) lives in London with his wife and two daughters. He is the author of four novels and three works of history, one of which, 'Rubicon', was short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize, and a second, 'Persian Fire', won the Runciman Prize. He is a regular adaptor of classic texts for BBC Radio, from the Iliad to Hiawatha. He is currently writing on late antiquity and the origins of Islam, and translating Herodotus for Penguin Classics.

Malorie Blackman's first book, Not So Stupid! was published by Livewire Books for Teenagers in 1990 and since then she has written over 50 books, including Noughts & Crosses, Pig-Heart Boy which was turned into a BAFTA winning serial, Hacker and Whizziwig among others. She has won a number of literary prizes.

Malorie has written TV scripts, including a number of Byker Grove episodes, Whizziwig episodes and Pig Heart Boy (the first 4 episodes) as well as a couple of original dramas for CITV and BBC Education. She wrote a play for the Polka Theatre called The Amazing Birthday which was performed in 2002. Malorie is a graduate of the National Film and Television School, and divides her time between book and script writing.
www.malorieblackman.co.uk

Nicholas Clee
nicholasclee.blogspot.com/

Kathryn Hughes is the author of three books on Victorian history. Her most recent, the acclaimed The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton (4th Estate), long-listed for the Samuel Johnson prize and  it has been a best-seller in the United States.

Her previous book, George Eliot: The Last Victorian won the James Tait Black Prize. Educated at Oxford, and holding a PhD in Victorian history, she is currently Professor of Life Writing at the University of East Anglia and Fellow of both the Royal Society of LIterature and the Royal Historical Society.

Since 2002 Kathryn has written regularly for the Guardian, contributing pieces on history and biography to the Review and opinion pieces to the Comment pages. She is a contributing editor to Prospect magazine and also writes for the Times Literary Supplement and the Economist. Her particular interests are Victorian history and contemporary popular culture.

Robert Irwin was formerly lecturer in the Department of Mediaeval History at the University of St Andrews. He is the author of six novels, as well as various works of non-fiction, including The Arabian Nights: A Companion, Islamic Art, The Penguin Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature, The Alhambra and For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and Their Enemies.  He is a consultant editor at the Times Literary Supplement and most recently he has edited and introduced The Penguin Arabian Nights.
 
Peter James is the author of 18 novels, as well as a film and TV screen writer and producer of 26 films the most recent of which, the BAFTA nominated The Merchant Of Venice starred Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons. His crime novels, set in and around Brighton and Hove, starring Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, are published in 30 languages, and are currently in development with ITV.

In 2005 Peter was awarded the accolade of Crime Writer of The Year in Germany, and his novel Dead Simple won both the 2006 Le Prix Polar Noir and the 2007 Prix Coeur Noir awards in France.  His novel Looking Good Dead was runner-up in the UK in 2007 for the Galaxy British Book Awards Crime Thriller Of The Year, and Not Dead Enough was shortlisted for Author Of The Year in the 2008 ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards.  He lives in Notting Hill, London and near Brighton, in Sussex.
www.peterjames.com
 
Graham Joyce
www.grahamjoyce.net

Blake Morrison was born in Skipton, Yorkshire. He was educated at the University of Nottingham and University College, London. He has worked for the Times Literary Supplement, The Observer and the Independent on Sunday. He is Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a former Chairman of the Poetry Book Society and council member of the Poetry Society, a member of the Literature Panel of the Arts Council of England and Vice-Chairman of English PEN.

His non-fiction books include And When Did You Last See Your Father? (1993), which won the J. R. Ackerley Prize and the Esquire/Volvo/Waterstone's Non-Fiction Book Award and was made into a film in 2007. Other works include As If (1997), Too True (1998) and Things My Mother Never Told Me (2002). His poetry includes the collections Dark Glasses (1984), winner of a Somerset Maugham Award, and The Ballad of the Yorkshire Ripper (and Other Poems) (1987). A selection of his poems, Pendle Witches, was published in a special edition in 1996, illustrated by the artist Paula Rego.

His work for the stage includes three opera libretti and (in collaboration with the Yorkshire-based theatre company Northern Broadsides) five adaptations of classic European plays.

Blake Morrison lives in London. His most recent novel is South of the River (2007).
www.blakemorrison.com

Lawrence Sail is a freelance writer who lives in Exeter. He has published nine collections of poems, most recently Eye-Baby (Bloodaxe Books, 2006), The World Returning (Bloodaxe Books, 2002), and Building into Air (Bloodaxe Books, 1995).

Lawrence has compiled and edited a number of anthologies, including First and Always: Poems for Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital (Faber, 1988); and, with Kevin Crossley-Holland, The New Exeter Book of Riddles (Enitharmon, 1999) and Light Unlocked (Enitharmon, 2005). Enitharmon also published Cross-currents, a book of his essays, in 2005.  In 2004 he received a Cholmondeley Award.

Lawrence has been chairman of the Arvon Foundation, programme director of the Cheltenham Festival of Literature, a judge for the Whitbread Book of the Year Awards and British representative on the jury of the European Literature Prize.

Anne Sebba
www.annesebba.com

Sarah Waters
www.sarahwaters.com
 

Co-opted Members of the Management Committee

 
Gillian Cross represents the Children's Writers and Illustrators Group. Her work has been widely translated and has won various prizes, including the Carnegie Medal (for Wolf) and the Smarties prize and the Whitbread Children’s Novel Award (for The Great Elephant Chase).  Four of her Demon Headmaster books were very successfully adapted for BBC television with scripts by Helen Cresswell. Gillian served on the Libraries and Information Services Council for England and on its successor, the Advisory Council on Libraries.  She believes that well-stocked and easily accessible libraries are vitally important, especially to young people, and has been fortunate enough to open many public and school libraries.

On her frequent visits to schools, she gives talks and runs workshops.  She has travelled to many countries to speak about her work, including Belgium, Sweden, Brazil, Australia, Mexico, Japan and Hong Kong. Gillian and her husband, Martin, have four grown up children.
www.gillian-cross.co.uk/

David Docherty represents the Broadcasting Group. He is a businessman, novelist, academic and columnist for Broadcast and the Guardian. As the Deputy Managing Director of Television, he was responsible for all the UKTV channels, BBC America, BBC Prime and for establishing BBC Three. As the BBC's first Director of New Media, he ran the team setting up bbc.co.uk. He also served as a Member of the Board of Management.

He left the BBC in 2000 to lead Telewest's push into broadband media, and he was creatively responsbile for BlueYonder, Telewest's award-winning broadband portal. He then became chief executive of YooMedia, the UK's biggest independent interactive media group. He left YooMedia in 2005 to develop a new convergence media company.

He is Chairman of the University of Luton’s Board of Governors, and has served on several government committees on the future of media. His novels include: The Fifth Season, The Killing Jar and The Spirit Death. Non-fiction consists of The Last Picture Show, Running the Show: 21 years of London Weekend Television and Violence in Television Fiction.
www.blakefriedmann.co.uk/filmClients/_218/

Judy Garton-Sprenger represents the Educational Writers Group
www.macmillandictionaries.com/authors/judygarton-sprenger.htm

Daniel Hahn represents the Translators Association. He is a freelance writer, editor, researcher and translator. He is the author of The Tower Menagerie (Simon & Schuster), the official history of the Roundhouse, and co-author of the guidebook to Shakespeare’s Globe. Among some 30 translations (from Portuguese, Spanish and French), major projects include Creole (2002) and The Book of Chameleons (2006) by Angolan novelist José Eduardo Agualusa. The latter won him the 2007 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

Angus Konstam represents the Society of Authors in Scotland. He is an acclaimed historian, with over sixty books in print. He is also one of the world’s leading authorities on piracy. A former naval officer and underwater archaeologist, he then spent ten years as a Museum curator, working on both sides of the Atlantic. He is now a full-time writer, living in Edinburgh. His most recent books include Blackbeard, Sovereigns of the Sea, Piracy: The Complete History, and There was a Soldier, which is due out this summer.
www.anguskonstam.com

See also

About the Society
Council
History
Staff