Linda France has five poetry collections published with Bloodaxe Books: Red, The Gentleness of the Very Tall, Storyville, The Simultaneous Dress and The Toast of the Kit Cat Club. In 1993 she edited the anthology Sixty Women Poets, which went into its fourth edition in 2002.
Her poetry has been performed on radio and television and she gives regular readings and workshops around the country. Poems have appeared in The Independent, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, Poetry Review, The Rialto, The North, Stand, Writing Women and various other magazines. She is also represented in many anthologies, including New Women Poets (ed. Carol Rumens), Making For Planet Alice (ed. Maura Dooley), The Firebox (ed. Sean O’Brien), Scanning the Century (ed. Peter Forbes) and North by North East (ed. Andy Croft & Cynthia Fuller).
Linda has received various awards and fellowships for her work, including the first Arts Foundation Poetry Fellowship in 1993, as well as the Basil Bunting Award two years in a row (1989 and 1990) and fellowships at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Eire, Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, USA and Hawthornden Castle, Scotland.
Linda has a particular interest in cross-arts collaborations and has worked with visual artists and musicians on assorted projects. She teaches creative writing at the University of Newcastle and in various community contexts.
Anna Woodford’s poems and reviews have been published in TLS, Rialto, Poetry London and Poetry Ireland Review. Her pamphlet Trailer (Five Leaves, 2007) is a Poetry Book Society Choice. She has received an Eric Gregory Award, an Arvon/Jerwood Apprenticeship, a Hawthornden Fellowship and a residency at the Blue Mountain Center (New York). She teaches creative writing for the Open University and at Newcastle University, where she is completing a PhD on the poetry of Sharon Olds. Her poetry commissions around the region include residencies at the Tyne & Wear Fire Service, Alnwick Garden and Durham Cathedral.
