Have some fun in the sun, delete January and beat the blues with Susie Wilson (‘tough but tender’ - Carol Ann Duffy, ‘effortlessly cool’ - Someone Else) and fellow finest local word turners of Greystones & Sheffield.
Susie Wilson, half poet, half tutor, half clown, is a Scottish LGBTQ+ writer living in Greystones, Sheffield, who has published two pamphlets, Nowhere Near As Safe As A Snake In Bed (Verve Poetry Press, winner of the Disabled Poets Prize 2024) and Skin the Rabbit (The Braag, 2025). She is now spending a year writing about rivers, collaborating with musicians and other performers, funded by the Arts Council. See more @concordmoose and www.susiewilsonpoet.com.
Susie will be performing poetry from Nowhere Near As Safe As A Snake In Bed, dealing with her experience of living with advanced melanoma and the cutting edge science used to treat it (bizarrely described as ‘one of the funniest pamphlets I have ever read’, by Jamie Hale), as well as more recent work, some written in clown, about the Don and the Spey rivers.
Jayne Lockwood is a teacher, writer and facilitator based in Greystones, Sheffield and a mum of two fantastic children. Her nature poetry has featured in ‘Wild Gardens’ and ‘The Wee Sparrow Press’ as well as two exhibitions at the Ruskin Gallery. Her short stories and flash fiction are published in various anthologies and are based around folklore, tarot and nature.
Jayne will be reading from ‘Heartroot’, a magic realist/ eco-mythic novel. When a forest guardian accidentally kills a sacred White Hind, a girl is born from its blood - half-human, half-myth. Together they must heal a poisoned world and rekindle the broken bond between humanity and the wild.
Roger Waldron is a “throwaway” poet. He lives and breathes in retirement on the north edge of Sheffield. As a child he lived in a house with wood chip on the walls and Artex on the ceilings. His poetry has appeared and disappeared in various poetry magazines Inc Dreich, Poetry Bus, Acid Bath (Night Terrors anthology) Hedgehog press, Sixty Odd Poets (number 37) The Candyman’s Trumpet. His pamphlet, My C&A Years was published by Dreich. It’s said that he writes poetry for the people who don’t do poetry.
Lemma Dore lives in Yorkshire, though wherever she goes people are sure she's not from round here. Metaphors leak out of her thumbs faster than she can mop them up. Some of her previous leakages have been published by Twisted Ink, Neo Perennial Press (Heroines Anthology vol. 5) and the Science Museum. She would like to hang out in a coffee shop with Kim Addonizio, John Donne and Hera Lindsay Bird, get palpitations and bitch about how they shelve anthologies in the library. Lemma will be reading some poems that probably won't rhyme but probably will have jokes in.
Lauren O'Donoghue is a writer, game designer and PhD researcher based in Yorkshire. Her short fiction has been featured in publications including Mslexia, Northern Gravy, and Blood Orange Review. As a freelance arts workshop facilitator, her recent clients include Leeds Trinity University, XR Stories, and Children’s Capital of Culture.
Lauren will be reading from Bare Hill, a composite novel she is writing as part of her PhD in Creative Writing at Lancaster University. Set against the backdrop of the Malvern Hills, the stories in Bare Hill span a period from Roman Britain to the present day, and draw on little-known events in the region’s history to explore themes of identity, belonging, and what it means to live in England.