About the Society

Management Committee

Margaret Drabble (Chair) is a novelist, biographer and critic. Born in Sheffield on 5th June 1939, she was educated at the Mount School, a Quaker boarding school in York, and read English at Newnham College, Cambridge. She became an actress and worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon before her first novel, A Summer Birdcage was published in 1963.

Her other novels include: The Garrick Year (1964), The Millstone (1965), winner of the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, Jerusalem the Golden (1967), winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction), The Waterfall (1969), The Needle's Eye (1972), winner of the Yorkshire Post Book Award (Finest Fiction), The Realms of Gold (1975), The Ice Age (1977), The Middle Ground (1980), The Radiant Way (1987), A Natural Curiosity (1989) and The Gates of Ivory (1991), The Witch of Exmoor (1996), The Peppered Moth (2001), The Seven Sisters (2002) and her most recent novel is The Sea Lady (2006).

Margaret Drabble is also the author of biographies of Arnold Bennett (1974) and Angus Wilson (1995), and is editor of both the fifth (1985) and sixth (2000) editions of The Oxford Companion to English Literature.

She was awarded the CBE in 1980, received the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1973, and holds honorary doctorates from the universities of Sheffield (1976), Manchester (1987), Keele (1988), Bradford (1988), Hull (1992), East Anglia (1994) and York (1995).

Margaret Drabble is married to the biographer Michael Holroyd and lives in London and Somerset. Her sister is the novelist and critic A. S. Byatt. In 2008 she was made a DBE.
www.redmood.com/drabble

Russell Ash compiles The Top 10 of Everything, which has been published annually since 1989 and appears in numerous languages around the world. Its content is widely quoted in the national press, and it has attracted extensive publicity, resulting in appearances on the Oprah Winfrey Show and other US and UK TV and radio programmes. It inspired a weekly peak-time ITV children’s television series which ran from 1998 to 2001.

Russell writes for adults and children in subjects ranging across reference, art, history, biography and humour. Russell is currently working on several novels for children. He is a member of the Biographers’ Club, and was Chairman of the South Coast Publishers Group (now the Sussex Book Group). Russell is married to Caroline Ash, they have a daughter and two sons and live in Lewes, East Sussex.
www.russellash.com
 
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 de Lange is Professor of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at the University of Cambridge, where he has taught since 1971. His academic publications, mostly in English and French, are about Hebrew language and literature and Jewish history and religion, with special emphasis on Greek-speaking Judaism and on Jewish–Christian relations.

Nicholas has written or edited a number of general books on Judaism, including Judaism (OUP), An Introduction to Judaism (CUP), Atlas of the Jewish World (Facts On File) and An Illustrated History of the Jewish People (Aurum). He is currently writing a dictionary of Judaism (for Penguin). He also translates contemporary Hebrew literature.

Susan Elderkin was born in 1968 and grew up in Leatherhead, Surrey. She studied English at Cambridge University and later, Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia with tutors Malcolm Bradbury and Rose Tremain, for which she was awarded that year's Curtis Brown scholarship.  She works as a freelance journalist and teaches Creative Writing at Manchester University.

Her first novel, Sunset Over Chocolate Mountains (2000) won a Betty Trask Award. The following year she was listed as one of twenty-one 'Orange Futures' women writers for the twenty-first century. Her second novel, The Voices (2003) was shortlisted for the 2005 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Ondaatje Prize. Susan Elderkin was named by Granta magazine as one of twenty 'Best of Young British Novelists' in 2003. She currently lives in London, but escapes to remote regions of the world whenever she can.

Bernadine Evaristo's first full-prose novel Blonde Roots was published by Penguin in August 2008. Bernardine is the author of the novel-in-verse, Lara, which traces the roots of a mixed-race Nigerian/English family over 150 years and 7 generations. Originally published in 1997 it will be republished by Bloodaxe Books, with additions, early 2009. The new version of the book will be called Lara: the family is like water.

Her other novels-in-verse include The Emperor's Babe (Penguin/Hamish Hamilton, 2001) and Soul Tourists (Penguin, 2005). She is co-editor of the Granta/British Council annual anthology NW15 (New Writing 15) with the novelist Maggie Gee (June 2007).
www.bevaristo.net
 
Jamila Gavin - Because of her Anglo-Indian background, dual heritage is the main inspiration behind Jamila's writing. Since her first book, The Magic Orange Tree was published in 1979, she has been writing steadily, producing collections of short stories and several novels for children aged from six to sixteen.

Her titles include the Grandpa Chatterji series, The Surya Trilogy, Coram Boy (which won the Children’s Whitbread Award in 2000) and The Blood Stone. Her main publisher is Egmont, although she is also published by various other publishers. Jamila is currently working on a novel set in contemporary London, called The Robber Baron’s Daughter, and also a new version of stories from the ancient Indian collection known as The Panchatantra. Jamila also writes for radio, stage and television.
www.jamilagavin.co.uk
 
Tom Holland lives in London with his wife and two daughters. He is the author of four horror novels and two works of history, one of which, Rubicon, was short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize, and the other, Persian Fire, won the Runciman Prize. He is a regular adaptor of classic texts for BBC Radio, from the Iliad to Hiawatha. His new book,  Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom, will be published in September. He is currently translating Herodotus for Penguin Classics.

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, it has also 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, Kathryn now teaches biographical studies at the University of East Anglia.

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.
 
Peter James is the author of 17 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 series of crime novels, set in and around Brighton and Hove, starring Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, are published in 30 languages and have been top ten bestsellers in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Holland. 

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 is currently a finalist entrant for the 2007 French SNCF Prix du Polar.
www.peterjames.com
 
Blake Morrison was born in Skipton, Yorkshire, in 1950. 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.

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.
 

Co-opted Members of the Management Committee

 
David Doherty 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/
 
Nicola Morgan represents the Society of Authors in Scotland. Nicola Morgan was born and educated in boys’ boarding schools, where she became very good at climbing trees and making weapons. She went to Cambridge University and studied Classics and Philosophy, before becoming an English teacher, later specialising in teaching children with dyslexia; she taught for 16 years and then founded Magic Readers, followed by The Child Literacy Centre, which she still runs.

All this time, she was practising to be a writer. She has had around 90 books published for very young children, including many non-fiction UK best-sellers. But she is happier as a novelist for older children and teenagers and has won awards in this field, including the Scottish Arts Council Children's Book of the Year. She also has a long-standing fascination with the human brain, and her examination of the teenage brain, Blame My Brain, published in 2005, was short-listed for the Aventis Prize.

Nicola is a regular speaker at festivals, schools  and conferences, and writes for a range of national newspapers. She is Chair of the Society of Authors in Scotland and lives in Edinburgh with her husband, two daughters and spoilt Labrador.
www.nicolamorgan.co.uk
 
David Orme represents the Educational Writers Group. David lives in Winchester. He is an ex-teacher who has been writing for about twenty years. He has published around 200 books, including fiction, poetry and non fiction for children, a wide range of text books and other school resources in print and on CD ROM. He is increasingly focused on writing fiction for reluctant readers, including the Boffin Boy series of graphic novels.  He visits around 40 schools a year, running writing workshops and talking about his work.
www.magic-nation.com
 
Celia Rees represents the Children's Writers and Illustrators Group. Celia was born and brought up in Solihull, West Midlands and taught English in city comprehensive schools for seventeen years. She became a full-time writer in 1997 and now divides her time between writing, talking to readers in schools and libraries, acting as a tutor on creative writing courses and reviewing.

Celia writes for older children and teenagers. She began writing in 1989 and her first book was published in 1993. Since then she has written many novels for this age group and a number of short stories. Her novel Witch Child was short listed for the Guardian Children’s Fiction award in 2001 and won the Prix Sorcières in France, 2003; the sequel Sorceress was short listed for The Whitbread Children’s Book Award in 2002; Pirates! was short listed for the W.H. Smith Award, 2004. Her latest book, The Stone Testament was published in October, 2007. Celia Rees lives in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire.
www.celiarees.com

Shaun Whiteside represents the Translators Association. He has twenty years’ experience as a translator from several different languages – French, German, Italian, Dutch – covering a wide range of genres, from the classics (Freud, Nietzsche) to contemporary fiction (Luther Blissett, Amélie Nothomb), and for many different publishers both here and in the US. Originally from Northern Ireland and now London-based, he has also worked in the past as a producer of television documentaries.

See also

About the Society
Council
History
Staff