Your faithful moderators
Professor Wu – A four-foot Chinese Salamander dubbed “critically endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Professor Wu writes news and features for our blog when not floating motionless in an aquarium at London Zoo. Professor Wu’s fine artistic tastes means he’s in charge of selecting our visual media partners who we showcase in our gallery. He tweets as @Professor_Wu.
Billy the Echidna – Not just your ordinary echidna; also the rootin’est tootin’est cowboy enthusiast in London, based out of the Natural History Museum, where you can catch him on display in the ‘mammals’ section. Billy holds a PhD in sub-atomic physics from Oxford, as well as a Masters degree in Writing and Publishing from Bath Spa university. Currently working on his third novel ‘How to be an ant’. Billy writes news and features for our blog when not writing sick riffs for Sting. He tweets as @BillyTheEchidna.
Nothing in the Rulebook editor, Ellen Lavelle, is a graduate of the University of Warwick’s prestigious Writing Programme. An aspiring novelist and screenwriter, she has worked with The Young Journalist Academy since the age of fourteen, writing articles and making short films for their website. She’s currently working on a crime novel, a historical fiction novel and the script for a period drama. She interviews authors for her blog and you can follow her @ellenrlavelle on Twitter. She is currently commissioning features for Nothing in the Rulebook and can be reached via the nitrbeditor@gmail.com email address.
The Gang
We are nothing without the people who write our posts, contribute stories, ideas, notions, sensibilities, musings, concepts, conceits, philosophies, designs, themes, schemes, projects, propositions, suggestions, recommendations; love.
To that end, we have set up this page to help you get to know the people behind the words; the voices behind the magic. It is an honour to introduce you to our fine contributors.
Tom Andrews is one of the resident book reviewers at Nothing in the Rulebook. He is a Genetics graduate and book lover based in Somerset. He has previously attempted music and game reviews. He tweets at @jerevendrai
Jessamy Baldwin is an avid globetrotter and Bristol based freelance writer. She has a BA in English Literature, an MA in International Journalism and writes about travel, food, history, literature and current affairs among other topics. She has worked in New Zealand as a communications advisor within government relations and as a newspaper columnist, in Malawi as an English teacher, in the Channel Islands as a news reporter and in the UK as a deputy editor in chief and freelance journalist. Always on the look-out for her next adventure and the perfect ‘cosmo’, Jessamy’s dream is to run her own content agency and keep exploring the world, pen, paper and camera in hand.
Julia Bell is a writer and Senior Lecturer at Birkbeck College, London where she teaches on the Creative Writing MA and is Project Director of the Writer’s Hub website. She is the author of three novels, most recently The Dark Light – an excellent novel, available to purchase here. She is the co-editor of the Creative Writing Coursebook as well as three volumes of short stories most recently The Sea In Birmingham. She also takes photographs, writes poetry, short stories, occasional essays and journalism, and is the co-curator of spoken word night In Yer Ear. She tweets as @JuliaBell
John Blackmore is a singer, songwriter, poet and English teacher based in Somerset. Much of his music (listen on Soundcloud) and writing draws on his experiences of, and interactions with, the people and places of his native west country. In 2011, John was a semi-finalist in the BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award and, in 2014, he contributed music and literary comment to a BBC Radio 4 documentary concerning the Victorian Dorset Dialect poet William Barnes. He is part of the Poetry Society’s ‘Young Poets Network’ (read his prize-winning poems here).
Lola Blake writes both adult and young adult fiction. She grew up in Australia’s Surf Coast Shire, before moving to Melbourne to study creative writing. After completing her Bachelor’s degree, she spent the next ten years trying out various careers and travelling, before finally deciding on teaching. Her first novel, Coming Home was written in eight weeks, during a visit to the seaside. She now lives in Melbourne with her husband and daughter and still retains her love for the beach. She tweets as @LolaBlakes
Rishi Dastidar has worked as a journalist, copywriter and poet. He has written for a wide variety of brands in different sectors during his career, while his poetry has been published by the Financial Times, Tate Modern and the Southbank Centre amongst many others. His work was most recently in Ten: The New Wave (Bloodaxe, 2014). A winner of And Other Stories short story prize in 2012, he has also had reviews published in the Times Literary Supplement. He was part of the 2014-15 Rialto / Poetry School editorial development programme, and also serves as a trustee of Spread The Word. He tweets as @BetaRish
Dougie Dodds can be seen as the embodiment of indecisiveness, but currently considers himself to be an illustrator and writer, with a keen interest in medieval and viking sagas. He has a BA in English Literature from UEA, and is currently working towards an MA in Authorial Practice: Illustration at Falmouth University. He is a self taught publisher, being the founder and currently sole employee of DoubleDeckerBooks, who have successfully published two poetry compilations and two children’s books. He also dabbles in journalism, having previously co-run the SPA winning student publication VENUE, and really hates beetroot.’ He writes and draws Nothing in the Rulebook’s monthly web comic.
Hannah Fairney Jeans was constantly imagining as a young child. These ‘imaginings’ were brought to life by her favourite toy; her type-writer. Now, twenty years on, Hannah is still penning stories, still consumed by her worlds, and still in love with creation, and her type-writer.
Ben Garland is an aspiring writer of novels, short stories and, when he feels particularly inspired, the occasional screenplay. Based in the UK, he’s inspired by the written word on page and on screen. A blogger and news writer for Nothing In The Rulebook, Ben can be found most days and nights by his typewriter. He Tweets at@BenGarland8
The Goatman – due to the usual experiments going wrong etc etc, The Goatman is an internationally-available gentleman of letters, raconteur and wit. His amorous conquests are myriad, his taste in whisky of renown, and his ability to look comfortable in extreme situations is of significant scientific study. He has been known to conspire with Vagabond Images.
David Greaves‘ poetry and fiction has appeared in ‘Valve’, the ‘Verge’ anthology and ‘From Glasgow To Saturn’ journal, and his prose-poetry pamphlet, ‘Hinged’, was released by the New Fire Tree Press in 2011. He mostly doesn’t tweet at @dgrbolith
Robyn Hardman is a writer, blogger and a PR and marketing consultant based in the Cotswolds. When she’s not writing press releases about silly cars, she’s usually in the pit at your local punk show. She tweets as @twobeatsoff.
E.A. Henson is one half of the Extra Secret Podcast. When not podcasting he is a mild-mannered worker at a major multinational corporation. He lives in Michigan.He tweets at @extrasecretcast
Asim Khan is from Birmingham, England. His work has appeared and is forthcoming in various print and online journals. He blogs on www.photoectric.co.uk. He tweets at @photoetric
Iain Maloney was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, and now lives in Japan. He is the author of three novels and has been shortlisted for the Guardian’s ‘Not The Booker Prize’ and the Dundee International Book Prize. His third novel, The Waves Burn Bright is out on Freight Books May 19th 2016. First Time Solo and Silma Hill are out now. Iain will be touring the UK in May to promote his new book. To book him for an event please contact him via Twitter. More atwww.iainmaloney.wordpress.com and @iainmaloney
Anna Maria Colivicchi was born and raised in Rome. After a BA in Italian Literature, she is now pursuing a Master’s in Writing at the University of Warwick. In her writing, she seeks the extraordinary in the ordinary, focusing on the details of everyday life.
Daniel Offen is an aspiring comedian and writer. He has written four jokes and half a book. He assures us he is capable of all of the usual thoughts and emotions of an unusual twenty four year old man and will talk about them at length. He deals primarily in irony and whimsy. He tweets as @danieloffen.
Peter Raynard is the editor of Proletarian Poetry: Poems of Working-class Lives (www.proletarianpoetry.com). He has written two books of poetry, his debut collection Precarious (Smokestack Books, 2018) and The Combination, a poetic coupling of the Communist Manifesto (Culture Matters, 2018), available here.
Charlotte Salter is a digital copywriter by day, YA author by night. Her first middle-grade novel, Catacomb Hill, is due to be published in the US by Dial Books in Spring 2017. She likes sea monsters, mushroom identification, and sword fighting (but not all at once).
Chris Smith is a writer, blogger, former philosophy lecturer and now co-founder at Prolifiko, a tech startup making digital productivity tools for writers of all types. His most recent side project is a new blog called Founders and Philosophers, where he’s aiming to write about what entrepreneurs can learn from history’s greatest thinkers. He tweets at @SwarmComms.
Josh Spiller is a published writer of comics, short stories, and scripts, and is currently looking for representation for his first novel. He’s also interacted with the “real world” by reviewing restaurants and theatre pieces for Flux Magazine and The London Word, and is worried that this bio is too self-centred. You can judge his work here, joshspillercomics.tumblr.com; and his very soul here – @JoshSpiller.
Adam Steiner is an artist who co-founded the Coventry-based not-for-profit publisher, Silhouette Press and Here Comes Everyone magazine back in 2012, as well as holding various literary events across Coventry, including the Fire & Dust poetry open-mics at The Big Comfy Bookshop (Fargo).
Christopher Tait has written and performed for Electric Six since 2002. When off tour, he’s at Brighton Center for Recovery (a treatment center outside of Detroit, MI) working with others who are struggling with addiction issues. Before starting Passenger in 2015, Chris was a freelance curator for Beats/Apple Music in Culver City, CA
Mark Tomlinson is an aspiring stand-up comedian. He thinks because he’s watched a lot of comedy that somehow means he’ll be good at it. After spending a year honing his material in various hovels throughout London (sometimes in front of as many as 10 people!) he recently took his show to the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Mark tweets at @MComedylinson. Mark likes writing introductions to his articles, eggs and talking in the third person.
George Vernon is a writer and English teacher based in the UK. He graduated from Warwick University with a first class (hons) degree in English Literature and Creative Writing in 2012, and completed his MA with distinction in Creative Writing from Chichester University in 2013. He has been shortlisted for the Almond Press Dystopian Short Story competition and won the Kate Betts award for most promising piece of fiction. When not teaching, George can be found writing; learning; living; loving. He tweets as @MrGeorgeVernon
nothing in the rulebook 
2 comments
Comments are closed.