TIFFANY ATKINSON is a lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University, and she gives regular readings and poetry workshops in the UK and internationally. She was winner of the Ottakar’s and Faber National Poetry Competition (2000) and the Cardiff Academi International Poetry Competition (2001). Her poems are published widely in journals and anthologies, and her first collection, Kink and Particle (Seren, 2006) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, shortlisted for the Glen Dimplex New Writers’ Award, and winner of the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Award. Her second collection will be published by Bloodaxe in September 2011.

PATRICK MCGUINNESS was born in Tunisia in 1968, and won an Eric Gregory award for poetry in 1998. His first collection of poetry, The Canals of Mars (2004), was shortlisted for the Roland Mathias Prize, and has been translated into Italian and Czech, and his pamphlet, 19th Century Blues (2007), was a winner in 2006 the Poetry Business Competition. His latest book of poetry is Jilted City (2010), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. He is also the author of several academic books and the translator of Mallarmé's For Anatole's Tomb (2003), for which he received a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. In 2009 he was made Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes académiques for services to French culture. His first novel, The Last Hundred Days, appears in May 2011. He is professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Oxford, and lives in Caernarfon.