The Slushpile Team

CANDY GOURLAY | TERI TERRY | EM LYNAS | ADDY FARMER | 
JO WYTON | NICK CROSS | KATHRYN EVANS | PAULA HARRISON


CANDY GOURLAY @candygourlay

Candy Gourlay was born in the Philippine and lives in London with her family and rather too many rugby balls. Her debut novel Tall Story has been nominated for many prizes including the Carnegie, the Blue Peter, Branford Boase and the Waterstone's Children's Book Prize. It won the Crystal Kite Award and the National Children's Book Award in the Philippines. Her second novel, Shine, was nominated for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize. She has also written for the Treetops series of Oxford University Press and Cbeebies, the preschool BBC radio channel. She wrote and presented the Radio 4 documentary Motherless Nation in 2005. 
When she succumbed to full-time motherhood, Candy avoided doing the dishes by teaching herself code and for a time was a full-fledged web designer. She is fascinated by the power of the web and social media and experiments with blogging, video and podcasting.


Agent: Hilary Delamere of The Agency.
Author blog: CandyGourlay.com




TERI TERRY @teriterrywrites
Born in France to Dutch-Finnish-Canadian parents, Teri Terry has lived in Canada, Australia and England at more addresses than she can count, acquiring four degrees, a selection of passports and a silly name along the way. She writes full time now, but past careers have included scientist, lawyer, optometrist, and, in England, various jobs in secondary schools, libraries and promoting literacy to disabled children with an audiobook charity.



The Slated trilogy - Slated, Fractured and Shattered - have won a dozen or so awards and are published in as many countries around the world. 

Mind Games came out in March 2015; its sequel, Dangerous Games, will be in Dec 2015. Book of Lies follows in March 2016, and after that it is the Dark Matter trilogy! 
 AgentCaroline Sheldon
Website: teriterry.com 
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/TeriTerryAuthor  



EM LYNAS @maureenlynas



Em Lynas loved reading funny books to her own children and caught the comedy bug from them so she now writes silly poems and stories for children. 
You can see Em's funny poetry for kids on The funEverse blog http://www.thefuneverse.com/ a blog by a group of funny poets who met through SCBWI and went on to create a site that brings authors and children together to have a giggle.

Em is the author of the Witch School Series published by Nosy Crow.



Under her other name, Maureen Lynas, she is the author of the Action Words Reading Scheme, a kinaesthetic approach to teaching high frequency words. 

Em is a member of SCBWI BI so that she can have more friends who understand her obsession.


Agent: Amber Caraveo 

Website: Em Lynas



ADDY FARMER @addyfarmer


Addy is a children's writer and former bookseller. She lives in rural North Lincolnshire but that was not always the case. Her random route through life began in Northern Ireland, before moving to Scotland and then many, many places in England until the police finally caught up with her. She gained a massively unhelpful degree in medieval history from London and then went into bookshops, film making and teaching.
Her first published writing was in Northern Short Stories vol. 5. It was a short story called The Devil You Know and was chosen by the wondrous Beryl Bainbridge and David Pownall. The story formed the basis for her supernatural thriller, twelve plus novel, Close to the Bone.
A poem in a Tony Bradman anthology, Look Out! The Teachers are Coming followed in 2007. Then a Walker Story, Grandad's Bench, reviewed by Carousel as, “A heart-warming tale which never steps over the line dividing love from sentimentality."
A picture book, Siddharth and Rinki illustrated by Karin Littlewood was published by Tamarind in 2009, this was also reviewed as "heart warming". Worlds Apart will be published in 2016 with Frances Lincoln and is probably also quite heart warming. She's hoping that her story about zombie ninjas from outer space may strike a different chord.
So apart from warming people' hearts, Addy also help out with the fabulous SCBWI trying to keep the SCBWI network co-ordinators connected and organising events and meetings as regional co-ordinator for the Central North. She runs a wondrous bed and breakfast which guests never want to leave. She is an occasional special needs teacher and also runs primary creative workshops.
For kicks, Addy likes to fence foil, cycle down hills and cloud spot (she's a fully paid up member of the Cloud Spotters Society) but for her, the biggest kick is writing.


Website: www.addyfarmer.jimdo.com


JO WYTON @jowyton


Jo is a writer and a geologist, and loves having two lives she gets to live simultaneously. Her job means that more often than not she’s 40,000 feet above where she should be, so most of her writing is done whilst trying not to viciously elbow that man sitting next to her in the ribs. On the plus side, her job is to picture the world as it looked millions of years ago, so her imagination gets daily training. She also occasionally helps out at the local bookshop, which she hopes to steal the deeds for someday.
After spending countless years writing books for Middle Grade, Jo realised she wasn’t a Middle Grade writer at all, and has since enjoyed writing novels for Young Adults. She won Undiscovered Voices 2012 along with 12 others

Photo: Christian Colussi




NICK CROSS @whoatemybrain

Nick works in publishing (leading the charge towards digital), writes middle-grade fiction & short stories and is editor of the SCBWI Blog Network, blogging every Tuesday on Ten Minute Blog Break. He's also been blogging about writing and publishing for over three years at whoatemybrain.com.
In 2010, Nick was a winner of Undiscovered Voices with his zombie comedy Back from the Dead. More recently he's been writing short stories for Stew Magazine, winning a Magazine Merit Honours Award for his short story The Last Typewriter in early 2015.

Stew Magazine short stories by Nick


Website: www.nickcross.co.uk
Blog: whoatemybrain.com





KATHRYN EVANS @mrsbung

Following a degree in drama and a short career in theatre, Kathryn Evans quickly realised she was likely to starve unless she got a proper job. She didn't get a proper job, she married a farmer and became farm administrator/accountant/payroll manager for their strawberry farm. This was a superb plan that meant, should starvation ever knock the door, there would be an abundance of soft fruit to see it off.
As well as writing, which she tries to see as work even though it's far too much fun most of the time, Kathryn collects odd hobbies: belly dancing, fencing, writing silly poems on www.thefuneverse.com and blogging over at www.kathrynevans.ink and now HERE at NFTSP – which has made her rather over excited. 
Her debut YA novel, More of Me was nominated for the Carnegie medal and won the Edinburgh International Festival First Book Award. Her latest book, Beauty Sleep, won the CrimeFest Award 2020 

Website: www.kathrynevans.ink or www.kathrynevans.online for events
Agent: www.sophiehicksagency.com




PAULA HARRISON @P_Harrison99

Paula Harrison is the author of Faerie Tribes (for older readers) and The Rescue Princesses (a younger series). She wanted to be a writer from a young age but spent many happy years being a primary school teacher first. She finds inspiration in lots of things from cloud shapes to snippets of conversation. She loves sandy beaches and eating popcorn. She lives with her husband and children in Buckinghamshire, which is nowhere near the sea. Whenever possible, she packs her family into the car and journeys far and wide to find a sandy beach where she can paddle in the waves.

Website: paulaharrison.jimdo.com

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