Edinburgh Napier University

David Bishop 

Bishop is a prolific author, award-winning screenwriter and former editor of iconic British comic 2000AD. As D. V. Bishop he writes the Cesare Aldo mystery novels, historical thrillers set in Renaissance Florence with a queer detective. For these he was given a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship by Creative Scotland, won the NZ Booklovers Award, and been shortlisted or longlisted for other prizes including the CWA Gold Dagger, the Ngaio Marsh Award and the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize.

David helped develop and launch the postgraduate creative writing programmes at Edinburgh Napier University in 2009. He is completing a PhD in Creative Writing at Lancaster University.

Noelle Harrison 

Award-winning and internationally bestselling Noelle Harrison is the author of ‘The Witches of Vardø’ (under the pen name Anya Bergman) as well as twelve other novels: ‘The Last Summer in Ireland’, ‘The Girl Across the Sea’, ‘The Boatman’s Wife’, ‘The Island Girls’, ‘The Gravity of Love’,  ‘The Valentina Trilogy’(under the pen name Evie Blake), ‘The Secret Loves of Julia Caesar’, The Adulteress’, ‘I Remember’, ‘A Small Part of Me’, and ‘Beatrice.’ Her next Anya Bergman novel, ‘The Tarot Reader of Versailles’ will be published by Manilla Press in 2024. Her books have been translated in over thirteen different languages. Noelle has been shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award 2023 and was The Sunday Times’ Best Historical Fiction of the Month in February 2023. Her short stories have won the Meath Chronicle/Bookwise Short Story Award, been shortlisted for the Molly Keane Award, and the Hennessey Award and featured in publications such as ‘Gutter Magazine of New Scottish Writing’, and in the anthology ‘Lines of Vision, Irish Writers on Art’ published by Thames and Hudson in collaboration with the National Gallery of Ireland. Noelle has also written and produced five stage plays: ‘Witches’ Gets’, ‘The Good Sister’, ‘The Black Virgin’, ‘Runaway Wife’ and ‘Northern Landscapes.’

Noelle has extensive experience in teaching Creative Writing having taught in third level institutions internationally as well as in schools and community groups. As a Master’s graduate of the Creative Writing programme at Napier herself, she is currently undertaking a PhD by Published Works Creative Practice model and has taught on both the undergraduate and postgraduate programmes at Napier. Her research interests and genre specialisms are feminist retellings, witch literature, fabulism, historical fiction, popular literary fiction, and literary erotica. 

Elizabeth Dearnley

Elizabeth is a writer, artist and folklorist whose work explores fairy tales, horror and interactive storytelling. She is the creator of immersive theatre installations Big Teeth (2017-18), The Sandman (2019-20) and Fairy Light (2022-23), the editor of weird fiction collections Into the London Fog (British Library, 2020) and Fearsome Fairies (British Library, 2021), and a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement and folklore zines Hellebore and Cunning Folk. Elizabeth holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and was awarded a practice-based Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at University College London exploring the evolution of Red Riding Hood. Before joining Edinburgh Napier in 2023, she taught at the University of London, the Freud Museum London, UCL and the University of Cambridge, and has led workshops at universities, festivals and cultural organisations around the world. Her genre specialisms and academic interests include fairy tales, horror, the Gothic and the uncanny, multimedia and immersive storytelling, narratives of place in public spaces, and the role of public engagement and creative practice in methodology and teaching.

Nicholas Binge 

Nicholas Binge is a bestselling author of speculative thrillers, literary science-fiction, and horror. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Sunday Times, The Wall Street Journal, The FT, Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, and more. His first novel, Professor Everywhere, was selected as a prize-winner by The Proverse Prize for Literature in Hong Kong. His most recent novel, Ascension, a New York Times Editor’s Choice Pick, has been hailed as a must-read “5-star horror novel” by Stephen King, and became a national bestseller in multiple countries. It is being translated into ten other languages and has been optioned for a major motion picture. Outside of fiction, he has written for The Guardian, Literary Hub, and CrimeReads, amongst others. Binge has worked in education for over a decade, teaching in multiple countries across the globe. His specialisms include horror and thriller writing, authorship and publishing, and speculative fiction.