LINDA CRACKNELL writes short stories, radio drama, and creative non-fiction. Her short fiction includes two published collections: Life Drawing (NWP, 2000) and The Searching Glance (Salt, 2008). A Creative Scotland Award in 2007 launched her into writing creative non-fiction about a series of journeys on foot, each of which followed a story or theme. The unpublished manuscript Doubling Back, was shortlisted for the Robin Jenkins Literary Award for environmental writing in 2009. She is editor of a non-fiction anthology on the wild places of Britain and Ireland, A Wilder Vein, (Two Ravens Press, 2009). She has abridged novels and non-fiction, and written a number of afternoon plays for BBC Radio Four, the latest The Three Knots, broadcast in December 2009. She is currently a Royal Literary Fund fellow at Stirling University and lives in Highland Perthshire.

www.lindacracknell.com

SARA MAITLAND’s first novel Daughter of Jerusalem won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1978; since then she has written five more novels – one of them Arky Types co-written with Michelene Wandor. Home Truths was the Scottish Novel of the Year in 1993. She has also published five single-author collections of short stories (her favourite genre). Her story “Moss Witch” was runner-up in the BBC National Short Story Award 2009. She has written extensively for radio and also writes non-fiction, most recently A Book of Silence.  She is now working on a book about forests and fairy stories - and on a full collection of short stories based, like Moss Witch on conversations with scientists.

www.saramaitland.com