Our teachers, course leaders, and manuscript assessors...
Petra McQueen
Petra McQueen has over forty publication credits including: The Saturday Evening Post, The Guardian, You Magazine, Writers' Forum, Lakeside Review and Open Road Review. She has also won sixteen writing competitions to date. The most recent of these are: The Writers' Forum, The Open Road Review, Strands International Short Story Competition, Grace Dieu, National Association of Writers’ Groups, and The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award.
She has taught English, Drama and Creative Writing for over twenty-five years. She has a Creative Writing MA (distinction) from Essex University, where she also worked as a lecturer. She has recently received a CHASE scholarship to work on her PhD in Creative Writing. She is specialising in Creative Nonfiction.
Past achievements include organising a Literature Festival with over forty events in ten different venues; co-editing ‘The Red Thread’: an anthology of new myths, written in Greek and English; and performing pieces live for the Essex Book Festival, the University of Essex and Patrician Press.
Petra McQueen is the founder of The Writers’ Company, is a manuscript assessor, and this term will lead the Book Writers Group. Please click here to see her testimonials.
Kate Worsley
Kate Worsley is an internationally published award-winning novelist
('She Rises', Bloomsbury UK & US) and an experienced writing mentor and teacher, working mainly with writers of long-form fiction and non-fiction.
She holds a BA in English Literature from UCL, an MA in Creative Writing from City, University of London and was RLF Literary Fellow at the University of Essex 2014-17 and a visiting lecturer in creative writing at City 2015-2019. She also works with the National Centre for Writing and the Writing Project. She holds an Introductory Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice, is an associate fellow of Advance HE and a member of the National Association of Writers in Education.
Her novel 'Foxash' was published in the UK & US by Tinder Press Headline in April 2023. You can find out more about it here.
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Kate Worsley is a course leader, manuscript assessor and mentor for The Writers' Company. Please see here to see her fantastic testimonials.
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Helen Chambers
After teaching for 25 years, Helen Chambers took an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Essex in 2016. She won the Fish Short Story Prize in 2018, in 2019 was nominated for Best Microfictions, and in 2021 was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. You can read more about these, and her 50+ publications on her blog.
Helen is usually to be found with her head in a book or out walking. She has been a reader for the Welkin Prize. In 2023, she directed a production of The Winter’s Tale for the Wivenhoe Open Air Shakespeare Company.
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Helen is accepting manuscripts of short stories and anthologies at present. Please read here for details about our manuscript assessment service and contact her here.
Dr. Sue Dawes
Sue has a doctorate in Creative Writing from Essex University, specialising in Speculative Fiction. Her recent conference papers include: World building, the Feminist Utopia, and Epigenetic Inheritance in Science Fiction. Sue also has an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University.
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Sue has more than 35 writing credits to her name across several genres. She has won crime writing and speculative fiction competitions and was short-listed for the Debut Dagger award in 2013.
Sue is an associate editor for Short Fiction Journal, a Beta reader for several published authors and helps to run a thriving community writing group, which includes running workshops.
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Sue believes it is a privilege to read other people’s work and she particularly enjoys genre fiction. With a writing and editing portfolio that spans literary fiction to science fiction and flash fiction to articles and novels, Sue is very flexible in her approach to new writing.
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Sue is a manuscript assessor and a one-to-one tutor for The Writers' Company. She can be found on Twitter @wivenhoewriters
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Arlene Francey Lyne
Arlene is a coach and is part way through an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Essex. She runs The Flourishing Woman: an online resource filled with practical inspiration to help you tend to what really matters to you.
Arlene’s career path started in an Arts Council funded organisation supporting poetry publishers and wound its way through business planning to senior management in the charity sector. Since 2005 she has been in private practice helping people effect meaningful change in their lives.
Arlene offers a small group coaching programme to make your writing happen.
You can find out more about Arlene here.
Juliet Lockhart
Juliet Lockhart is Artist in Residence at The Writers Company. Juliet has a curiosity for unearthing stories. Her practice is bound up with storytelling and she uses art as a stimulus for her writing; exploring collections in museums and galleries, engaging with the natural world and creating mixed media pieces that weave their way into her stories.
Her work both as educator and artist makes connections: connecting people to the past and allowing them the space to tell their story; connecting place to story through walking in the footsteps of others; connecting hand, eye and heart through the process of making.
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Juliet Lockhart studied Textile Design at West Surrey College of Art, Fine Art at University College Suffolk and has an MA in Literature and Creative Writing from The University of Essex. She is founder and Artistic Director of LockARTS, an arts in mental health charity.
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She teaches art and creative writing through her charity LockARTS, specialising in bringing the arts and heritage together to promote positive wellbeing. Juliet is a mentor for the Writers Company. You can find out more via her personal website here, and LockARTS here.
Elizabeth Ferretti
Elizabeth is a graduate of the Arts Council Escalator programme, received an Arts Council award for her novel in progress (with research trips to Chernobyl and Sweden), and was recognised for her specialist ELT writing in a recent international award.
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She helps writers, published and unpublished, get the best from their manuscripts. Recent projects include a time-travelling film script, a thriller set in 1980s Berlin, and a coming-of-age drama set in rural Australia, due for publication in 2021.
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Elizabeth teaches creative writing for The Young Walter Scott Prize, working with young writers in dramatic settings; for the National Trust on Orford Ness in Suffolk; and is founder of Writer Revealed – support and wellbeing in writing. She has been a Writer in Residence for Suffolk Mind, and is a trustee of The Barbellion Prize – the international book prize dedicated to the furtherance of ill and disabled voices in writing.
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Her personal website can be found here. For free writing prompts from Elizabeth follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
Lelia Ferro
Lelia has 25 years experience as a journalist, editor, publisher, producer, digital content strategist, and poet. She held a senior editorial role at Channel 4 for 10 years, and is currently working towards her doctorate in Creative Writing at the University of Essex titled - 'How We Live In Essex, a poetic exploration of people and place'. She has three 1st class postgraduate degrees - an MA in Creative Writing, and PGDip in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy from the University of Essex, and a Broadcast Journalism accredited MA from Bournemouth University.
Lelia is a local leader in the genres of psychogeography - which she defines as, 'the interrelationship between people and place', and community writing. She has held poetry residencies, working through the community, at Firstsite in Colchester, Colchester and Ipswich Museums, 'Snapping the Stiletto' - Essex County Council, Metal in Southend, Suffolk Art Link, and The Art Place in Chelmsford - in association with Macmillan cancer support. In addition to her poetry writing, Lelia is currently producing a book on community writing techniques and facilitation, bringing together many disciplines including community therapy, journalistic techniques as creative research, and collaborative poetry. She has taught poetry across the county, and is passionate about cultivating new and diverse voices. She most enjoys writing poetry about the lives of 'ordinary' people, who she finds extraordinary.
Although Lelia has had work published in many anthologies, and has published several titles of her own, she is less concerned with literary accolades, preferring her own journey of working through the community, and self publishing in her Facebook community group, 'Married to the Marshes'. Lelia has excellent links in publishing through a wide range of media and platforms, and enjoys playfully exploring opportunities in this space, creating work that is timely, collaborative, and engaging.
Born in the U.K., owner of two successful healthcare businesses and BBC broadcaster, Angela has been involved with coaching since 1986. She began her writing career with non-fiction articles and progressed to a blend of fiction and non-fiction in the creation of Play Pause Unwind a series of relaxation visualisation resources.
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Her ambition to write a novel was realised in 2019. Successful in gaining agency representation, then came the long wait - over two years and three novels later, still no traditional publishing contract.
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Endless time ahead is promised to no-one. Angela made a commitment to learn how to present, market, and successfully self-publish her work to a professional standard. She has currently published four women’s fiction novels, two short story anthologies and is an Amazon Best-Selling author. Her short stories have been published in Yours magazine and feature regularly on the radio. She is a regular guest on writing podcasts. Her website can be found here and her Instagram feed is here.
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Writing has completely changed her life, and she has a passion for helping writers achieve their full creative potential by passing on the knowledge and skills she has gained. She understands well the difficulties of moving from first draft to published book.
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But, if not you, then who can write your book?
Angela Cairns
Dr. Naida Redgrave
Naida is a screen/writer, researcher and lecturer. Her doctorate in Creative Writing from the University of East London focused on screenwriting, and as well as teaching on the BA Creative Writing (online) course for Falmouth University, Naida teaches BA and MA Screenwriting at the University of East London.
Naida’s work frequently explores the lives of minoritised women; her published works include the children's middle grade biography The Extraordinary Life of Mary Seacole (Puffin Books, 2019), and a YA biography on Shonda Rhimes (Enslow Publishing, 2017). Her doctorate explored the relationship between cinematic representations and screenwriting practice, and looked at developing methodologies to interrogate the way that screenwriting informs representation.
Naida has experience in children’s and drama TV development, with commissioned work including Horrible Histories (Lion TV, 2022) and drama series development for Lonesome Pine/ Channel 4 (2019). She’s had two original drama pilots optioned; Wild Island, winner of the TriForce Writerslam competition (2018), and Home, finalist in the C21 International Drama Series Script competition (2015).
Naida is interested in both fiction and non-fiction which explores topics and themes around identity, family dynamics and lesser-known or under-explored hi(stories) and characterisations, and is available as a one-to-one tutor through The Writer’s Company.
Alice Stephens
Alice Stephens runs our social media accounts. She is a writer and marketer based in Colchester. Prior to working with The Writers Company, she worked in the University of Essex Students' Union as a marketing and digital media frontrunner. Based within the activities department, she handled accounts, promotions, and strategies for societies, volunteering groups, sports teams, student media outlets, and the on-campus cinema.
In 2017, she co-founded Projector literary magazine. She edited fiction for the first two print issues. In 2022, she founded Community Creative Writing, a volunteering project for the Students' Union at the University of Essex. The project aims to promote creative writing as a form of self-expression and wellbeing.
Alice completed her BA in Creative Writing and English Literature at the University of Greenwich in 2019, for which she received first class honours. She was awarded a distinction for her MA in Creative Writing at the University of Essex in 2022. Her dissertation consists of a play about the experience of coming out as a transgender woman. She aims to produce it this year.
Dr Andrew Burton
Andrew Burton is a writer, dramaturg and academic. A Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, he has taught writing for theatre and writing for radio at the University of Essex since 2016 and has a PhD candidate in Eco-Theatre.
He holds a BA in English and Drama from the University of Hull, a diploma in Theatre Directing from the Drama Studio London and is an accredited coach for writers. His play The Twin (adapted from Gerbrand Bakker’s Dutch novel of the same name) received a rehearsed reading at the Lakeside Theatre, University of Essex, in autumn 2022. An excerpt from his play Peak Stuff was performed as part of the 2020 Essex Book Festival. In 2019 he was co-chair and judge of the New Angle Prize for Literature. He is also a book reviewer, most recently having reviewed James Canton’s Grounded (Canongate, 2023) for Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. As dramaturg, recent projects include Nicola Werenowska’s 2022 play The Black Madonna and Mary Mazzilli’s 2022-23 play Lightstreams.
Andrew is a course leader, a script assessor for theatre and radio, and offers one-to-one guidance and support to writers at all stages of their careers.