Ashley Douglas

Ashley Douglas (she/her) is a multi-lingual researcher, writer, and translator, specialising in the Scots language and LGBT+ history. Her current work focuses on the Maitland Quarto: a 16th-century Scottish manuscript in Scots, which contains among the earliest Sapphic poetry in Europe since Sappho herself was writing. She has worked with and written for a range of national heritage and literary organisations, including the National Library of Scotland, Historic Scotland, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and the British Library. She was the Scots specialist judge for DigIt! Scotland’s flash fiction writing competition for Scotland’s Year of Stories 2022. She is on the board of editors of the Scots literary magazine, Eemis Stane. 

Bashabi Fraser

Dr Bashabi Fraser, CBE is an award-winning poet, children’s writer, editor and academic. Her work traverses continents in transnational literary projects. She is the recipient of a CBE (2021 New Year Honours) for Education (her academic work), culture (poetry) and cultural integration (her bridge building projects linking Scotland and India). Bashabi was declared an Outstanding Woman of Scotland by Saltire Society in 2015. She has authored and edited 23 books, published several articles and been widely anthologized as a poet.  

Bashabi is Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing, Edinburgh Napier University and Director of Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies (ScoTs); Honorary Fellow, Centre for South Asian Studies, University of Edinburgh and Fellow of the Association of Scottish Literary Studies (ASLS). She is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow and Chief Editor of the academic and creative peer-reviewed international e-journal, Gitanjali and Beyond.  

Bashabi is a Trustee on the Board of Scottish PEN, an executive committee member of Poetry Association of Scotland and Director on the Board of the Patrick Geddes Trust, a Trustee of the Kolkata Scottish Heritage Trust and Honorary Vice President of the ASLS. Bashabi is on the Editorial Board of several international peer-reviewed journals and has been an Adjudicator for many national and international creative writing competitions, including the Kavya Prize, initiated in 2022 as a major Scottish literary prize by Glasgow University. 

John Miller

John studied English Literature at Glasgow University and, after a brief 15-year sojourn in the hospitality industry, now works as a bookseller. He lives in the Southside of Glasgow with his partner and cat, both of whom have given up on trying to stop him bringing more books home.

Kirsten McQuarrie

Kirsten MacQuarrie (she/they) is a writer and artist from Glasgow who is also Membership Officer for CILIPS: the Chartered Institute of Library & Information Professionals in Scotland. Kirsten’s first novel was Ellen and Arbor (2020) and her second will be The Rowan Tree (Valley Press, 2023), inspired by the true story of the 'some-requited' love between poet Kathleen Raine and author-naturalist Gavin Maxwell.  
 
Kirsten’s writing has been published by New Writing Scotland, The Scottish Poetry Library, Glasgow Women's Library, Gutter Magazine, Scottish PEN, the Federation of Writers Scotland, Postbox Magazine, Speculative Books, The Young Women's Movement, the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society, Tipping the Scales, DREICH -algia and others. She has been shortlisted for a Vogue Magazine Young Talent Award, selected as an Editor's Choice for the John Byrne Award and twice winner of the Glasgow Women's Library Poetry Prize. In 2020, Kirsten’s short story 'The Wordsworth Women' won second prize in the Federation of Writers Scotland Vernal Equinox competition, and in 2021 she hosted 'Verses and Violets: Taking Pride in Queer Women Poets' at the Scottish Poetry Library.