Nick Barlay

is the author of three highly acclaimed novels, Curvy Lovebox, Crumple Zone and Hooky Gear, and was named in 2003 as a h4 contender for Granta's twenty best young British novelists of the last ten years. His fourth novel, The Wife of a Man Who, has been published in France. The written history of his Hungarian Jewish family was also published. As a freelance journalist, he has contributed to a wide range of newspapers and magazines, including a long-running series about London for The Times. He has also written a walk for the Time Out Book of London Walks, Volume 2, award-winning radio plays, and short stories for anthologies. He has taught journalism and creative writing for over 15 years.

Ross Biddiscombe

is a journalist of 30 years' experience, also an author, broadcaster, writing coach and PR consultant. He specialises in writing about sport and television and has worked for national newspapers like The Guardian, monthly magazines including Golf Monthly, regional daily and weekly newspapers and specialist and trade magazines. He has also been a radio news reader/reporter and worked in various roles for several satellite TV channels including National Geographic TV. Ross has interviewed personalities as varied as Muhammed Ali, the Duke of York, William 'The Fridge' Perry and Seve Ballesteros. He has recently completed two acclaimed biographies about the struggles of journeymen golfers and is a regular contributor to titles including the Royal Television Society's monthly magazine.

Jane Cassidy

started her journalism career as a reporter on local newspapers on the south coast and in London before working as a writer and editor at Macmillan magazines. Moving to become news editor at The Big Issue magazine in London enabled her to focus on investigations and campaigning journalism. She led the news team which won a Mind Journalism Award for best reporting of mental health issues, while the editorial team won the CRE Race in the Media Award. She worked with homeless teenagers on a writing project which became a book about their experiences. Her freelance work has appeared in a range of national newspapers and magazines, including The Guardian, The Independent and The Observer, and she has written a regular investigative column for The British Medical Journal. She has worked as an assistant producer/producer on current affairs documentaries for Channel 4 and the BBC and for an artist on a Turner Prize project examining the impact of reality TV.

Adam Chamberlain

is an experienced, award-winning, self-shooting Director Producer, having created over 200 hours of content and programming for Broadcast in the UK and around the world. His work is used across multiple platforms including Television, social media channels and radio, and for the charity, corporate and broadcast sector.

Gavin Evans

has been a journalist for over three decades. He started out as a news reporter and then worked as a feature writer, columnist and night news editor, while stringing as a foreign correspondent. Later, Gavin worked as a freelance feature writer and broadcaster (radio and television) and also as a sub-editor. His academic background is in economic history and law, and my PhD is in politics. In recent years he has written for a number of UK publications including The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Mail and the New Internationalist, and he also writes for the Mail and Guardian in South Africa. Gavin has written six books, the latest of which is 'Black Brain, White Brain' (Thistle and Jonathan Ball), which exposes the fallacies of racist IQ theory. He is currently completing his next book, 'Mapreaders and Multi-taskers' on genes and gender. He has lectured at LSJ and at Birkbeck (University of London) for more than a decade, and also assists with the MA journalism course at the University of Cardiff.

Paul Gogarty

has been providing features for all the national travel pages for over 20 years. He has been a travel editor on several publications, was chief travel writer at the Daily Telegraph for a decade and regularly presented on BBC 1's Holiday programme. He is the author of two award-winning travelogues and his latest book is a psychoanalytic look at sporting legends entitled 'Winning at all costs - Sporting gods and their demons'.

Lynne Hackles

is a butterfly writer, flitting from genre to genre. She has sold over four hundred short stories to women's magazines in the UK, Australia and Scandinavia. She has written greetings cards, newspaper advertisements, comic strip stories for children, a novel for pre-teens and been a ghostwriter. She currently has three how-to-write books out and is busy being a journalist and article writer, under three different names. Lynne has given talks and held workshops all around the UK and is a tutor for Writers' News home study courses.

Andrew Knight

began his journalism career in Scotland on the Aberdeen Evening Express, where he won a number of writing awards, including Young Scottish Journalist of the Year, and later became the paper's features editor. He moved to BBC Scotland in Glasgow in 1989, but returned to print journalism in the early 1990s and spent five years as assistant editor of The Bath Chronicle, principally responsible for the paper's features and entertainments coverage.  He has had widespread freelance writing experience and been heavily involved in journalism training for the past 10 years with a variety of newspaper groups. He held a full-time post as editorial training manager for Trinity Mirror's Western Mail & Echo newspapers in Cardiff  for two years prior to becoming a full-time freelance tutor and lecturer.

Valerie Loh

is a published author of over thirty five historical and contemporary titles published by F A Thorpe under her pseudonym Valerie Holmes. Her work encompasses crime, adventure and romance. She has also written articles  and had work published as a ghost-writer. She is a previous winner of David St John Thomas Charitable Trust’s Annual Ghost Story competition, run by Writing Magazine. She is an experienced creative writing tutor of distance learning courses and manuscript appraisals, including work for the R. N. A.’s New Writers' Scheme. She was shortlisted for the award with her first published title. As a reader for the Historical Novel Society she reviews both adult and children’s books. She is a member of the Society of Authors, The Crime Writers’ Association and the Romantic Novelists’ Association  (Valerie’s ‘Hannah of Harpham Hall’ was short listed for the Romance Prize in 2006). Valerie's latest book, 'Moving On', was shorted listed for the 'Love Story of The Year Award 2011 at this years RNA.

Monica Malpass

' news anchoring career spans more than 35 years in television in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and North Carolina for ABC, CBS, and NBC affiliates. She also was a radio and print journalist. She currently freelances as a business news anchor at the Nasdaq, and produces and anchors segments for New To The Street which airs on Bloomberg TV, FOXBusiness news, and Newsmax. Further, she anchors TV business news segments for the Broadcast Retirement Network, which has 2 million viewers nationwide in the U.S. She has interviewed seven US Presidents one-on-one including President Joe Biden, countless celebrities, athletes, politicians, and CEOs.

Nick Alatti

Born in Birmingham, Nick cut his journalistic teeth at Cater's News Agency as a court and sports reporter. He later moved to the Birmingham Daily News where he became a senior reporter and a feature writer. His proudest journalism moments were working on the Lockerbie disaster, the Kegworth air crash and the release of the Birmingham Six. He also did a number of celebrity interviews including Pavarotti, Joan Collins, Ella Fitzgerald, Lenny Henry, Fry and Laurie and Simon Rattle. Nick worked on the short-lived 'The Planet on Sunday' before moving to Devon and working on the Exeter Express and Echo. In 2005 he turned freelance to spend more time with his young children. Nick has recently written for the Sunday Express, the Mail on Sunday, New!, Fresh and Practical Family History magazines as well as subediting for Country Gardener magazine.

Wendy Richmond

originally trained in Fine Art, turning to writing when it became easier to combine this with raising a family. She returned to study as a mature student in her early 30s gaining a degree in Philosophy, and later an MA in Scriptwriting. A Hawthornden Fellow, she has tutored creative writing for decades, edited poetry magazines, dabbled with filmmaking, and had interludes with theatricals. Active for many years in organising literary events as well as tutoring, she now leads a quieter life and has recently returned to her art – this sits nicely alongside the poetry. She says there is no greater delight than to read a truthful but crafted poem that engages the reader on that special journey – even more so when it has been written by an LSJ student.

Lorna V's

career in journalism began with financial, trade and business publications, moving into national tabloid and broadsheet newspapers, niche health titles, mass market and glossy magazines. She has written about all aspects of lifestyle including fashion and interiors, health and fitness, food and travel, wellbeing and relationships. Her editing experience includes four years as Time Out's Sell Out (consumer-lifestyle). She has written Psychologies magazine's first branded book, Real Confidence (published by Capstone/Wiley in February 2016) and is currently working on Real Ambition as well as continuing to contribute to the magazine. Lorna's first play was short-listed for the Verity Bargate award, and she was on attachment to the Soho Theatre for one year. She has recently performed her work at the Chelsea Arts Collective, the Lion & Unicorn theatre and Battersea Arts Centre. Lorna's lectures and workshops in journalism for the London School of Journalism draw on her interest in psychology and aim to inspire students to find their unique, authentic writing voice.