Meet the tutors who are here to guide, support and encourage you to produce your best work.
Our online tutored courses are designed and delivered by award-winning tutors and industry experts. All are published writers, and many have studied or taught at the University of East Anglia.
Dr Breeze Barrington
Dr Breeze Barrington is a writer and cultural historian specialising in women’s history and stories. Her first book, The Graces: The Extraordinary Untold Lives of Women at the Restoration Court, was published by Bloomsbury in July 2025. Breeze is a Bye-Fellow at the University of Cambridge, an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and has previously taught Biography/Non-Fiction at the University of East Anglia, as well as courses in seventeenth century literature and culture at Queen Mary, University of London.
As an arts writer and critic, Breeze has written for the Financial Times, the TLS, Apollo Magazine, The Art Newspaper, CNN Style, Art UK, and BBC History Magazine, and has appeared on podcasts including BBC History Extra, the TLS Podcast, Not Just the Tudors, Talking Tudors, and the Colnaghi Foundation. She has also worked as a script consultant for Working Title and Monumental Pictures.
Breeze is teaching our Writing the Past course in September.
Read Breeze Barrington’s tips on how to evoke the past in your writing →
Benjamin Johncock
Benjamin Johncock is an award-winning novelist, short story writer and journalist. His debut novel, The Last Pilot, was published in the U.S. and U.K. to widespread critical acclaim. It won the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award, was shortlisted for the East Anglian Book of the Year, selected for Brave New Reads, and was one of The Observer’s Hidden Gems of 2016. His award-winning short stories have been published by The Fiction Desk, The Junket, Comma Press and Storgy. His journalism has appeared in the Guardian, The Spectator, and many others, and he has worked as an editor and copywriter. He’s on the editorial board of The Letters Page, a literary journal edited by Jon McGregor at the University of Nottingham, and for two years was a mentor for the National Centre for Writing’s Escalator writing programme. He is also a recipient of two Arts Council England grants. He lives in Norwich with his wife, his daughter, and his son.
Ben is teaching our How to Write Fiction course in September.
Read Benjamin’s dos and don’ts of writing fiction →
Nicola Dinan
Nicola Dinan grew up in Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur and now lives in London. Bellies, her debut, won the Polari First Book Prize, was shortlisted for the Diverse Book Awards and Mo Siewcharran Prize, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and was longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize.
Her second novel, Disappoint Me, was published in 2025 and was chosen as Best Book of 2025 by Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Stylist, Elle, Dazed, Vogue, AnOther, and GQ.
Image © Stuart Simpson
Nicola is teaching our How to Write Fiction course in September.
Read Nicola’s thoughts on writing romantic relationships in fiction →
Edward Parnell
Edward Parnell has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. He’s been the recipient of an Escalator Award from the National Centre for Writing, and has taught Creative Non-Fiction with us since 2020. His second book, Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country, a work of narrative non-fiction was published in hardback in the UK during October 2019 by William Collins, and subsequently released in the UK and US in paperback in October 2020. The book was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley Prize 2020 for memoir and autobiography.
Ed is teaching our Creative Non-Fiction: An Introduction course in September.
Read about Ed’s experience writing his mixed-genre book Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country →
Alison May
Alison May is a novelist, editor and writing mentor who has published romance fiction under several pen names, including Ally Sinclair and Amelia Berry. A former Chair of the Romantic Novelists’ Association (RNA), she also coordinated the inaugural Romance Writing Festival in Bournemouth in 2025.
Her romantic comedies have been shortlisted for both the Love Stories and Romantic Novel of the Year awards. Writing with Janet Gover as Juliet Bell, she has published two classic novel reinterpretations with HQ/HarperCollins. As Amelia Berry, her most recent romance series is set around a cookery school in a quirky Scottish Highland village.
Alison is teaching our How to Write Romantic Fiction course in September.
Helen Ivory
Helen Ivory is poet and visual artist who makes shadowboxes, collage and needlefelt creatures. She edits IS&T, teaches and mentors for Arvon, The Poetry School and NCW. Her sixth Bloodaxe collection Constructing a Witch (2024) was a PBS Winter Recommendation and last summer was translated into Greek and published by Thraka.
A poem from her surrealist chapbook Maps of the Abandoned City (SurVision 2019) is one of the Poems on the Underground. Her Wunderkammer: New and Selected Poems appeared from MadHat in the US in 2023. She is the grateful recipient of an Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors, and has just been awarded an Authors Foundation Grant to work on Elfshot, her new collection for Bloodaxe.
Helen is teaching our Kickstart Your Poetry course in September.
Read Helen’s advice on writing symbolism and imagery from the everyday →
Megan Bradbury
Megan Bradbury is a British writer, tutor, and mentor, and author of the critically acclaimed novel, Everyone is Watching (Picador, 2016). Described as a ‘beating heart of a novel’ by Ali Smith and ‘kaleidoscopic’ by Eimear McBride, the novel was longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, and was listed as one of the Guardian’s Best Books of 2016. Bradbury is a graduate of the Creative Writing Prose Masters programme at the University of East Anglia, and has been awarded the Charles Pick Fellowship, an Author’s Foundation award, and numerous grants from Arts Council England. She has written for the Irish Times and the Times Literary Supplement. She is also an experienced artistic collaborator and a previous recipient of the Escalator Literature Prize.
Megan is teaching our Develop Your Fiction course in September.
Read Megan’s thoughts on finding your voice as a writer, and the importance of mentorship →
Amy Key
Amy Key is the author of the memoir Arrangements in Blue (Jonathan Cape, 2023), chosen as a Book of the Year by The Sunday Times, Independent, Irish Times and Granta and shortlisted by Foyles for their Non Fiction Book of the Year 2023. She is also the author of two collections of poetry, Luxe (Salt, 2013) and Isn’t Forever (Bloodaxe, 2018). Her essays have appeared in the collections At The Pond (2019) and By the River (2024) published by Daunt, as well as Granta, Vogue, The Observer, The Poetry, Independent and elsewhere. Her Substack is So Glad I’m Me.
Image by Robin Christian
Amy is teaching our Memoir: The Next Chapter course in September.
See Amy Key’s recommendations for books that will be a friend in hard times →
Camilla Balshaw
Camilla Balshaw‘s debut memoir, Named: A Story of Names and Reclaiming Who We Are, is published by Bedford Square. It won the Biography & Memoir Award at the East Anglian Book Awards 2025.
Camilla has written for the Guardian and Observer. She holds an MA in Creative & Life Writing from Goldsmiths (Distinction) and is an Honorary Research Fellow in Name Studies at the University of Nottingham.
Camilla is teaching our Mapping the Self: Life Writing course in October.
Hear from Camilla on themes of identity and belonging in her memoir Named →
Jenny Knight
Jenny Knight is the author of Wild Moon Rising, a lead title for a new HarperCollins imprint, Akan Books, headed by June Sarpong. A prize-winning writer of short story, fiction and memoir, whose work featured in Kit de Waal’s celebrated Common People anthology, her writing has appeared in many national and online publications. She’s an Associate Artist with the National Centre for Writing and has worked extensively as a copywriter, editor, developmental editor and mentor.
She’s taught creative writing in prisons, worked on storytelling projects for the UN/Comic Relief in Somalia and Kenya, as an actor, in pubs, on farms, and temped in the 80s music industry. Jenny also hosts panels, talks and workshops on rejection, resilience, creative writing, and the writing process.
Jenny is teaching our Preparing for Publication course in October.
Read our case study on Jenny, looking at rejection, inclusivity and getting an agent →
