Lead academics
David Bishop
David is the author of more than twenty novels ranging across crime, fantasy, horror, and science fiction. An award-winning screenwriter, he has scripted TV dramas and radio plays for the BBC. He now writes historical thrillers set in Renaissance Florence. The first, City of Vengeance (Pan Macmillan), won the 2022 NZ Booklovers Prize, was shortlisted for the 2021 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize and longlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger award. The second, The Darkest Sin, was published in March 2022 with two more novels under contract. In 2009, he helped develop and launch the MA Creative Writing at Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland, the world's first full-time, face-to-face programme specialising in genre fiction. He became programme leader in 2017 and is completing a PhD in Creative Writing via distance learning at Lancaster University.
Dr Pete Freestone
Pete’s debut, Shadowscent: The Darkest Bloom (Scholastic), was a YA fantasy novel published in the UK and US in 2019 and subsequently translated into seven other languages. An Aurealis Awards finalist, and a Scottish Book Trust and DIVA Magazine Book of the Month, it was followed by Shadowscent: Crown of Smoke in 2020. Pete is a graduate of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop (University of California), and their short stories have appeared in various print and online venues including MG and YA anthologies. Before joining Edinburgh Napier in 2021, Pete taught workshops and mentored writers for Scottish Book Trust, New Writing North, ArtLink Edinburgh, SCBWI, and more. Pete holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne and was a Commonwealth Scholar at the University of Edinburgh. They supervise PhD candidates and publish scholarly research in the areas of writing pedagogy, practice and publishing; linguistics in commercial genre fiction; and environmental humanities.
El Lam
El Lam is a Sunday Times Bestselling author whose work includes the near-future space thriller Goldilocks (Orbit/Wildfire), feminist space opera Seven Devils and Seven Mercies (co-written with Elizabeth May) (DAW/Gollancz), BBC Radio 2 Book Club selection False Hearts, its companion novel Shattered Minds (both Tor Books/Tor UK), and the award-winning Micah Grey series: Pantomime, Shadowplay, and Masquerade (Tor UK). Forthcoming work includes the Dragon Scales epic fantasy trilogy (DAW/Hodder & Stoughton). El Lam’s short fiction and essays have appeared in anthologies such as Nasty Women (404 Ink), Solaris Rising 3 (Solaris), Cranky Ladies of History (Fablecroft), Scotland in Space (Shoreline of Infinity), and more. El Lam self-publishes F/F romance as Laura Ambrose. Since 2016, she has lectured at Edinburgh Napier University on the Creative Writing MA and English BA. Her specialisms include YA fiction, authorship and publishing, and speculative fiction.