Click here for full programme of the Literary conference.

Ellah Allfrey is Deputy Editor of Granta. She sits on the board of Writers’ Centre Norwich and is deputy chair of the Council of the Caine Prize for African Writing.  In 2010 Allfrey was on the judging panel of both the David Cohen Prize and the Caine Prize for African Writing. In 2011 she served a second term as a Caine Prize judge and is chair of the fiction prize panel for the 2012 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. Her introduction to Woman of the Aeroplanes by Kojo Laing is published by Pearson, African Writers Series. Allfrey was awarded an OBE in 2011 for services to the publishing industry.

Claire Armitstead is books editor for Guardian News and Media, a new role covering the Guardian, the Observer and guardian.co.uk. She was literary editor for the Guardian for twelve years. She presents a weekly books podcast for the Guardian and makes regular appearances on BBC radio. She was a moderator at UNESCO’s 2011 conference on the Book Tomorrow and in the last year has spoken at publishing conferences in Italy, France and Spain.

Nick Bates is the Digital Product Manager at Mills & Boon. Starting in the world of music and digital marketing, Digital Commerce & Marketing Manager Nick Bates, moved to Romance HQ and has led the digital strategy at Harlequin UK for six years. Looking after the romance giants Mills & Boon, the teen fiction new-kid on the block MIRA Ink and the general fiction imprint MIRA books. The first publisher to publish all frontlist titles in digital and print simultaneously, Harlequin UK continue to lead the way in digital innovation.

Alison Baverstock was a publisher and is now an author and academic. She is Course Leader for MA Publishing at Kingston and has written widely about the book business, including the changing role and responsibilities of the author. Her most recent book is The Naked Author (Bloomsbury) the first book on self-publishing to be published by a traditional publisher.

Michael Bhaskar is Digital Publishing Director at leading independent publisher Profile Books. He is responsible for spearheading their digital strategy, their ebook program and digital business development in creating new products and platforms. Over the past few years Michael has written and talked extensively on the topic of digital publishing.  He has worked as Digital Editor at Pan Macmillan, at the literary agency Rogers, Coleridge and White, reviewed books for The Daily Telegraph, worked for an economics research firm, and builds websites like quikqr.com, a barcode generator. Michael has a degree in English Literature from the University of Oxford and was British Council Young Creative Entrepreneur 2011. He is on Twitter as @ajaxlogos.

Carole Blake founded her literary agency in 1977 after 14 years working for publishing houses, finally as Marketing Director of mass market paperback imprint Sphere.  She is President of The Book Trade Charity: BTBS, past President of the Association of Authors’ Agents, past Chairman of The Society of Bookmen and now joint MD of Blake Friedmann and running the agency with her ex-husband.

Carole is the Author of From Pitch to Publication (Macmillan, 1999) currently in its 12th printing.

Carole’s clients include Elizabeth Chadwick, Barbara Erskine, Liz Fenwick, Ann Granger,  Ken Hom, Peter James, Lawrence Norfolk, Joseph O’Connor, Sheila O’Flanagan,  Tess Stimson and Julian Stockwin. She lives in a London penthouse with so many books and shoes that one day it might become a basement. She enjoys her job even more now than in past years: today’s challenges are exciting.

Gavin James Bower is an editor at Quartet Books, working on its fiction and non-fiction lists. He’s also the author of two novels – Dazed & Aroused (2009) and Made in Britain (2011) – and his writing’s appeared in the Guardian and the Sunday Telegraph. He was born and raised in Lancashire and now lives in London.

Urvashi Butalia is a publisher and writer living in India. She began her publishing career working as an editor at Oxford University Press in Delhi, and spent a year at its headquarters in Oxford. Later, she taught a professional course in book publishing at the University of Delhi. In 1982 she joined Zed Books, London, and helped to set up their Women and Gender list, before returning to Delhi in 1984 to co-found Kali for Women, India’s first feminist publishing house. Kali was set up to increase the body of knowledge on women in the developing world, to give voice to such knowledge as already exists, and to provide a forum for women writers, creative and academic. Butalia is now the director of Zubaan Books, which she founded in 2003, and which is an imprint of Kali. Butalia’s writing focuses on the modern history of India, and on partition and oral histories in particular. She has also written on gender, communalism, fundamentalism and media. In 1998 she wrote the award-winning The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India, which has been one of the most influential books in South Asian studies of the past decade. It remained at the top of India’s bestseller list for over six months and won the Oral History Book Association Award in 2001, as well as the Nikkei Asia Award for Culture in 2003. In 2011, Butalia was awarded the Padma Shree by the Indian government, which is considered one of the highest civilian honours in the country.

Joanna Ellis is Associate Director at The Literary Platform where she works on a range of projects for literary organisations, publishers, developers and start-ups. Prior to this she spent five years as the Marketing Director of Faber and Faber where she was involved in in publishing and promoting a wonderful list of books, new product/service development and launch, audience engagement, brand management and partnership brokering.

David Godwin has been a literary agent for fifteen years. Before that he was a publisher  at Heinemann, Secker and Warburg and Jonathan Cape. David Godwin Associates specialises in a wide range of international clients, including Arundhati Roy, Vikram Seth, Aravind Adiga, Jim Crace and Aminatta Forna for fiction; poets  Simon Armitage and Michael Symonds Roberts; biographers Claire Tomalin, Richard Holmes and Rosemary Hill;  historians William Dalrymple, Noel Mostert and Peter Hennessy, as well as a host of other writers including Ed Smith, Pippa Middleton, Aman Sethi and Richard Benson. He is publishing his first  book this summer called BREAKING 80 – it is a book about golf not old age.

Linda Grant was born in Liverpool. She completed her BA, Masters, and Postgraduate courses on two continents – the United Kingdom and Canada – before settling in North London. In 1996 her first novel, The Cast Iron Shore, won the David Higham First Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize. Since then Linda has continued to write award-winning literature that has including the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2000 (When I Lived In Modern Times) and being shortlisted for the Man Booker in 2008 (The Clothes Off Their Backs.) Her work is translated into French, German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Czech, Russian, Polish, Turkish and Chinese and her latest novel We Had It So Good was published in January 2011 by Virago.

Robert Kroese’s sense of irony was honed growing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan – home of the Amway Corporation and the Gerald R. Ford Museum, and the first city in the United States to fluoridate its water supply. In second grade, he wrote his first novel, the saga of Captain Bill and his spaceship Thee Eagle. This turned out to be the high point of his academic career. After barely graduating from Calvin College in 1992 with a philosophy degree, he was fired from a variety of jobs before moving to California, where he stumbled into software development. As this job required neither punctuality nor a sense of direction, he excelled at it.

Kroese finished his first novel, the humorous apocalyptic fantasy Mercury Falls, in 2009. When he was unable to interest a publisher in Mercury Falls, he self-published it, selling nearly 5,000 copies over the next six months. His success caught the attention of Amazon Publishing, who re-released Mercury Falls under their AmazonEncore imprint in 2010. Mercury Falls went on to sell another 50,000 copies, and in 2011 Amazon Publishing released the sequel, Mercury Rises. Kroese detailed his self-publishing strategy in an ebook, Self-Publish Your Novel: Lessons from an Indie Publishing Success Story.

Kroese lives in Ripon, California, with his wife and two children.

Hari Kunzru is the author of the novels The Impressionist (2002), Transmission (2004), My Revolutions (2007) and Gods Without Men (2011), as well as a short story collection, Noise (2006). His work has been translated into twenty-one languages and won him prizes including the Somerset Maugham award, the Betty Trask prize of the Society of Authors, a Pushcart prize and a British Book Award. In 2003 Granta named him one of its twenty best young British novelists. Lire magazine named him one of its 50 “écrivains pour demain”. He is Deputy President of English PEN, a patron of the Refugee Council and a member of the editorial board of Mute magazine. His short stories and journalism have appeared in diverse publications including The New York Times, Guardian, New Yorker, Financial Times, Times of India, Wired and New Statesman. He lives in New York City.

Hari is keenly interested in all things digital, and says “writers know only too well that new technologies are shifting the ground beneath our feet. The changes in distribution, promotion, and reading platforms are only part of the story.”

Julian McCrea is the founder of Portal Entertainment, a cross-platform production company based in London. Portal Entertainment were invited as part of UK T&I trade mission to SXSW 2012, won 1st prize at Startup Weekend London in September 2011 and Most Innovative Company. It was also the top 10 finalist at the Tech City Enrepreneur Festival 2011. Julian created the Immersive Writing Lab with BBC Writers Room, an event to help writers become immersive writers: http://www.immersivewritinglab.com/ leading to a three month competition to try and find the writers of tomorrow: http://www.circalit.com/projects/competitions/immersive.   Julian also recently won the ICASE award from the government to look into how audiences connect with non-linear storytelling.

Prior to launching Portal Entertainment, Julian McCrea worked at the forefront of multiplatform digital strategy in the advertising industry, working with engaging 6-12 year olds with the CBBC brand and show properties (MI High, Sarah Jane Adventures), CBeebies, BBC Switch, BBC iPlayer and main BBC One properties Eastenders and Bang goes the Theory, winning two PROMAX awards. He also launched the Doctor Who global facebook page, with over 1 million fans at the time of press.

In addition, Julian was shortlisted in the Top 5 in the world by BAFTA and Sir Ridley Scott for the horror short ‘The Craftsman’ as part of the Philips Cinema award 2010 and officially selected for the Werner Herzog Rogue Film School 2011.

Nicola Morgan is an award-winning author of around ninety books and a well-known speaker about all aspects of writing and publishing. She created the popular blog, Help! I Need a Publisher!,  where she offers trademark honest advice in the voice of the Crabbit Old Bat. The blog led to her highly-acclaimed book, Write to be Published, followed by Tweet Right – The Sensible Person’s Guide to Twitter, and Write a Great Synopsis – An Expert Guide. Other notable works include the famously gruesome novel Fleshmarket; the Aventis short-listed Blame My Brain: The Amazing Teenage Brain Revealed; and her award-winning novel, Wasted. She lives in Edinburgh with her family and many pairs of boots.

Kate Mosse is a novelist, non-fiction writer and playwright, as well as being the co-Founder and Honorary Director of the Orange Prize for Fiction. She has written five novels including the multi million international No 1 bestseller Labyrinth, and the No 1 bestselling novels Sepulchre and The Winter Ghosts.  The third in her Languedoc Trilogy, Citadel, will be published in September 2012. She is also author of two previous non-fiction books and her history of Chichester Festival Theatre is published in May 2012. Her short stories have been published in a range of collections including ‘Midsummer Nights’, ‘The Best Little Book Club in Town’, ‘Why Willows Weep’ and ‘The Library Book’. She has also written three plays, Syrinx – which won a PPC Broadcast Award in 2009, Endpapers, part of the Bush Theatre’s ‘Sixty-Six Books’ series in October 2011, and a major commission for CFT, Dodger, for 2013.

A regular guest on radio and television, Kate  is a member of the Board of the National Theatre, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and enjoys several other prominent  cultural and civic roles. With her husband Greg Mosse, she also founded the Chichester Writing Festival, and teaches creative writing at West Dean College.     In addition, Kate is one of the authors involved in leading the campaign to save the national library service. She has years of experience in the literary world and is a generous and brilliant speaker, interested in sharing knowledge she has gained with others.

Maria Rejt is a passionate editor with years of experience. She spent six years at Hodder working with some of the best editors in publishing and is now Director of her own Mantle imprint at Macmillan, which publishes high-quality writing with broad appeal including general, crime, thriller, literary fiction and narrative non-fiction.  Included in the list are Benjamin Black (John Banville), Andrea Camilleri, Martin Cruz Smith, Scott Turow and Minette Walters.

Sophie Rochester worked for publishers 4th Estate and Jonathan Cape (Random House) before moving to the digital agency Good Technology in 2000. She then moved to Colman Getty, working on the Man Booker Prizes and the Hay Festival, before setting up her own consultancy in 2007. She is Founder/Director of The Literary Platform, an organisation dedicated to exploring new platforms for literature, which also offers consultancy services for publishers, literary organisations and digital agencies. She is also Director for Fiction Uncovered, a Arts Council England-supported initiative which helps British fiction writers find wider audiences.

Jon Slack has nine years of experience working in the book trade. A former SYP Chair (2009), he is involved in a number of projects in addition to co-producing The Literary Conference that include: co-directing the DSC South Asian Literature Festival and South Asian literature Reading Campaign; developing the membership and website of the Book Marketing Society; and founding the inaugural International New Publishing Network. He co-founded Canon Tales with Doug Wallace and co-produced the 2010 Author Blog Awards. He has sat on the advisory committee for the DIPNET Equalities Charter and has previously worked in sales, marketing and publicity roles at Taschen, Transworld and Aurum Press publishers, as well as Borders Adelaide prior to that. Twitter: @JonSlack

Marina Salandy-Brown is the director and founder of the NGC Bocas Lit Fest, the largest Anglophone literature festival in the Caribbean.  She also founded the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. MSB is a former prize-winning BBC producer and senior manager with a background in publishing in the UK.  She returned to her native Trinidad and Tobago in 2004 and established a regional media consultancy and was the first executive director of the country’s annual film festival. She is a consultant of the Trinidad and Tobago Film Company and a weekly newspaper columnist.

Cathryn Summerhayes is a literary agent at the William Morris Endeavor, where she has been established since November 2006.  She works alongside the New York agents, primarily selling UK rights for high-profile US clients, such as Anita Shreve, Matthew Pearl, Jed Rubenfeld, Kathy Reichs, Alice Munro and Curtis Sittenfeld.

In addition, Cathryn has a burgeoning stable of her own authors, including Richard Milward, the 23 year-old first-time novelist of APPLES, who has been described by the Financial Times as ‘the JD Salinger of our time’, Clare Wigfall, whose critically-acclaimed short-story collection, THE LOUDEST SOUND AND NOTHING won the 2008 BBC National Short Story Award, David Whitehouse, whose BED won the inaugural TO HELL WITH PRIZES this year and Deborah Kay Davies, winner of Welsh Book of the Year 2009.

Previously to working at WME, Cathryn worked at David Godwin Associates and David Higham Associates, and before that, at Colman Getty PR, where she coordinated a number of high-profile events, including the Man Booker Prize and the Samuel Johnson Prize.  Cathryn also co-ordinates the Literary Tent at Camp Bestival and is involved with Latitude and Port Eliot Festivals.

Karolina Sutton works as a literary agent for Curtis Brown. She represents a variety of writers, from award-winning debut novelists to internationally renowned authors of quality non-fiction and popular fiction bestsellers. Before joining Curtis Brown, she was an agent at International Creative Management.

Arzu Tahsin began her career in publishing over twenty years ago at Virago Press. She then moved to Random House where she worked at Vintage, before joining Bloomsbury in 2002 where she acquired Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, Jim Lynch’s The Highest Tide and most recently, Daniyal Mueenuddin’s In Other Rooms, Other Wonders. She is currently Editorial Director at Weidenfeld & Nicolson, part of the Orion Group. She has worked with many successful authors including Donna Tartt, Joanna Trollope, Kamila Shamsie, Chuck Palahnuik, Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, Jeanette Winterson, Salman Rushdie and Anne Tyler. Arzu has also appeared as a speaker on the subject of getting published for TLC’s mentoring scheme, Chapter & Verse, and The Faber Academy.

Simon Trewin is the head of the books department at Europe’s leading literary and talent agency United Agents. Based in Soho, it was formed in 2007 and represents a diverse client list of authors, actors, screenwriters, directors, designers, composers and comedians.  Simon’s authors include Sir Andrew Motion, Richard Curtis, Andrew Miller, John Boyne, Kate Williams, Scarlett Thomas, Steven Hall, Robert Goddard, Danny Wallace and Nicci French. He is also the author and co-author of a number of books and contributes widely to the national and trade press. Simon is a former Secretary of the Association Of Authors Agents and has twice been shortlisted as Literary Agent Of the Year in the British Book Awards. He is a Trustee of the Salisbury Playhouse and the Arvon Foundation. (Picture of Simon (c) charlotteknee.com)

Tony White is the author of novels including Foxy-T (Faber and Faber). In 2008 he was writer in residence at the Science Museum, London. Tony White collaborated with Blast Theory to write Ivy4evr, an SMS-based, interactive drama for young people broadcast by Channel 4 in October 2010 and nominated for a BIMA award in 2011 by the British Interactive Media Association. Tony’s latest work of fiction is Dicky Star and the garden rule (Forma), a loose collaboration with the artists Jane and Louise Wilson commissioned to mark the 25^th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster and published April 2012. Tony White chairs London’s award-winning arts radio station Resonance 104.4fm.

Kerry Wilkinson is something of an accidental author. His debut, Locked In, was written as a challenge to himself but, after self-publishing, it became a UK number one bestseller within three months of release. His three initial Jessica Daniel books sold over 250,000 copies in under six months, making him Amazon’s UK No.1 author for the final quarter of 2011, its biggest-ever sales period. He signed  a six-book deal with Pan Macmillan in February 2012.

Tom Williams worked at the talent agency Peters, Fraser and Dunlop before setting up the Williams Agency in the Spring of 2011 to represent authors of fiction and non-fiction and specialize in food and cookery in particular. The agency also has a strong digital focus, selling rights and managing digital projects. Clients include Dave Broom, Manju Mahli and Philip Womack.  Tom also works as a consultant,   which has  included building and developing websites and growing online communities for World Book Night.

Rukhsana Yasmin entered publishing in 2005 with a Diversity in Publishing Traineeship at Saqi Books. Prior to this she worked in the world of digital media, developing online marketing campaigns and project managing websites for her clients, including Twentieth Century Fox, BT and the Royal Navy. Most recently Rukhsana has worked at Profile Books as editor where she acquired the award winning In The Place of Justice by Wilbert Rideau and From Dictatorship to Democracy by Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Gene Sharp. Rukhsana is now Commissioning Editor of non-fiction and fiction at The Westbourne Press and Telegram, both imprints of Saqi Books.

Kerry Young was born in Kingston, Jamaica to a Chinese father and mother of mixed African-Chinese heritage. Kerry has a long history of non-fiction writing and editing on issues relating to youth work and young people including ʻThe Art of Youth Workʼ and numerous professional publications as well as chapters and articles in academic books and journals. She has a PhD from De Montfort University and completed the Creative Writing MA at Nottingham Trent University in 2005. Her first novel ʻPaoʼ, published by Bloomsbury in June 2011 and Bloomsbury US in July 2011.