2020/21

Tony Bradman is an award-winning author of books for children of all ages. He published his first books in the 1980s, soon became active in writers’ organisations, serving on committees for both the Society of Authors and the Writers’ Guild, and has twice been a member of the Advisory Committee for Public Lending Right.

He served as a Director of ALCS between 2007 and 2013, and returned to the company as Chair in 2017. He also served as a Director of CLA between 2008 and 2014, and is currently Co-Chair. Tony has edited many anthologies of short stories and poetry, and reviewed children’s books for The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Times Educational Supplement and various specialist journals. In 2008, he helped set up The Siobhan Dowd Trust, a charity that makes books available to under-privileged children and was Chair of the organisation until 2018.

Joanne Harris is the author of 19 novels, including Chocolat, as well as scripts, libretti, short story collections and cookbooks.

Her work has been published in over 50 countries and has collected a number of British and international honours and awards. She is an honorary Fellow of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, and in 2013 was granted an MBE by the Queen. She has been a judge of numerous prizes, including the Orange, the Whitbread, the Desmond Elliot, the Betty Trask and the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science. An ex-teacher turned professional author, she is currently a member of the Management Committee of the Society of Authors and the chair of the Society of Authors' Membership Committee.

Faye is the author of two Young Adult novels – My Second Life and What I Couldn’t Tell You. She worked in Television for over 10 years as a Literary Agent at The Agency (London) Limited and Talkback Management representing scriptwriters in drama, children’s and comedy before becoming a writer herself.

She regularly visits schools giving talks and running workshops on creative writing for young people, and has been part of the Schools Outreach Programmes for both the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the Bath Children’s Literature Festival. She has also presented workshops for Booktrust and the National Literacy Trust on inspiring reluctant readers. Both of her books were well received and shortlisted for several children’s book awards, including the NE Teen Book Award 2014 and Lancashire Book of the Year 2017.

Faye joined the ALCS board as a Non-Executive Director in 2017.

Dr Tom Chatfield is a British writer, broadcaster and tech philosopher.

The author of six books exploring digital culture - most recently Live This Book!, How to Thrive in the Digital Age and Netymology – his work is published in over two dozen languages. Tom is interested in improving our experiences of digital technology and in better understanding its use in policy, education and engagement.

Most recently, he was a Visiting Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute, researching a new book on critical thinking. Past collaborators include Google, the BBC, Channel 4 Education, Mind Candy, Shift, Flamingo London, Six to Start, Preloaded, Firefish, Future Lab, Sense Worldwide, SAGE Publications, Sugru and Allianz.

Tom joined the ALCS Board in 2017

James McConnachie is a writer and journalist. He wrote a critically acclaimed study of the Kamasutra, The Book of Love, and is the author of numerous Rough Guides, from Paris and Nepal to Conspiracy Theories and Sex. He is a Sunday Times critic, the editor of The Author (the quarterly journal of the Society of Authors) and, much to his surprise, an agony uncle for the Metro newspaper. He is currently working on a book about the Himalayas, due to be published by Bloomsbury.

Maggie Gee is a novelist and Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, and was re-elected to the Board of ALCS in 2019.

She has lobbied for writers, e.g. on the Society of Authors’ management committee, the PLR committee, the British Library’s Authors’ Lives committee, the London Arts Committee and the Royal Society of Literature, where she was the first female Chair of Council and is now a Vice-President.

She has written 12 novels, including The Ice People, My Cleaner, My Driver and The White Family, a collection of short stories, The Blue, and a writer’s memoir, My Animal Life. Her most recent novel is Virginia Woolf in Manhattan, a comedy which brings Virginia Woolf back to life in New York and Istanbul. Her next novel will feature Neanderthals in Gibraltar and the ‘black’ Goyas.

Maggie ‘s books have been translated into 14 languages; in 2012 an international conference about her writing was held at St Andrew’s University, and in the same year she was awarded the OBE for services to literature. She is often to be found tramping the beautiful beaches of Thanet.

Di Redmond has written scripts for most of the major broadcasters – Nickelodeon, CBBC, Cbeebies, ITV, CITV, Aardman TV, Channel 4 and Siriol TV Wales, in Europe she’s been commissioned by the Disney Channel, ZDF, KIKA Germany, Universal TFI France, Content Film and TV Finland, KETNET Belgium and RSK Norway, in North America she’s written for HIT NYC, the Jim Henson Company and CBC Canada.

Apart from film and television she’s worked for BBC Radio, nationally and locally, and published over 100 books with most of the major publishing houses. She’s written for the stage, has been a successful ghost writer and her on-going work Bomb Girls (a WW2 Saga series commissioned by Penguin) is rated on Amazon’s top 100 bestseller list. Di’s passion for campaigning on behalf of her fellow writers has led her to work with the All Party Writers’ Group in Parliament and the SAA (Society for Audiovisual Writers) in Europe.

Okechukwu Nzelu is a Manchester-based writer.

In 2015 he was the recipient of a Northern Writers’ Award from New Writing North. In 2020 his debut novel, The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney (Dialogue Books/Little,Brown), won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Betty Trask Prize, the Desmond Elliott Prize, and the Polari First Book Prize. His second novel, Here Again Now, will be published by Dialogue Books in March 2022. He is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Lancaster University.

Photo credit: Martin Glackin

Joan Smith is a novelist, columnist and campaigner for human rights. She has published six novels, including the Loretta Lawson series of crime novels and a thriller, What Will Survive.

Her non-fiction books include Misogynies, Moralities, Hungry for You and The Public Woman. She has written for many national newspapers, including The Times, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph.

Since June 2013, she has been Co-Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Panel (now the VAWG Board). She is a former Chair of the English PEN Writers in Prison Committee, where she worked on behalf of imprisoned writers and their families. She is currently Chair of Labour Humanists.