Two Minute Stories with Chris Neilan & Helen Mort Chris Neilan & Helen Mort

Vicky Morris is an award-winning poet and the founder of Hive Young Writers, an organisation for young writers in South Yorkshire. She received a 2014 Northern Writers Award, and won 1st prize for poetry in the 2020 Aurora Prize.

Monique Roffey's 7th novel, The Mermaid of Black Conch, was released in April 2020 to widespread acclaim. She was shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2010, won the OCM BOCAS Award for Caribbean literature in 2013, and has been shortlisted for the Orion Award and the COSTA Fiction Award.

Trinidadian-British poet Vahni Capildeo's poetry collections include No Traveller Returns (2003), Undraining Sea (2009), Dark and Unaccustomed Words (2012), Utter (2013), Measures of Expatriation (2016), which won the 2016 Forward Prize, and Venus as a Bear (2018).

Michelle Green's multi-award nominated short fiction collection, Jebel Marra, about her time as an aid worker in Darfur, is published by Comma Press. Her work has also appeared in the Comma Press anthology Protest! Stories of Resistance, on BBC Radio 4, and in Short Fiction Journal, with poetry appearing in numerous anthologies.

A doctor of neuroscience by training and a former Royal Society fellow at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Rachel Genn's debut novel The Cure was published by Corsair in 2011. Her second novel, What You Could Have Won, is due for publication in 2020 by Sheffield-based publisher And Other Stories. She teaches creative writing MA programmes at Sheffield and the Manchester Writing School.

Keith Hutson's much anticipated debut collection, Baldwin's Catholic Geese, was published to acclaim by Bloodaxe in 2019. A prolific comedy writer for stand-ups including Les Dawson and Frankie Howerd and a scriptwriter for Coronation Street, Keith has had more than 150 poems published in journals and anthologies. His pamphlet, Troupers, was selected by Carol Ann Duffy as a Laureate's Choice publication.

Natalie Burdett was selected by Carol Ann Duffy as a Laureate's Choice Poet for 2018, with her pamphlet Urban Drift published by The Poetry Business. She is currently studying for a Creative Writing PhD at MMU's Writing School.

Crime novelist Oliver Harris is the author of three novels featuring the London detective Nick Belsey (The Hollow Man, Deep Shelter, and The House of Fame), and one featuring intelligence officer, Elliot Kane, 2019’s A Shadow Intelligence.

Helen Mort, former co-host of Two Min Stories, is the author of two collections of poetry, a novel (Black Car Burning) and a collection of short fiction (Exire). She is also a dramatist and an academic, and a regular BBC broadcaster.

Emily Oldfield is a highly regarded young poet whose first pamphlet, Grit, was published by Poetry Salzburg in March 2020.

Michelle Green's multi-award nominated short fiction collection, Jebel Marra, about her time as an aid worker in Darfur, is published by Comma Press. Her work has also appeared in the Comma Press anthology Protest! Stories of Resistance, on BBC Radio 4, and in Short Fiction Journal, with poetry appearing in numerous anthologies.

Seán Hewitt is a fiction reviewer for The Irish Times and a Leverhulme Research Fellow at Trinity College, Dublin.
His debut pamphlet Lantern (Offord Road Books, 2019) is a Poetry Book Society Summer Pamphlet Choice for 2019. His debut collection is forthcoming from Jonathan Cape.