Lindz McLeod is a queer, working-class, Scottish writer and editor who dabbles in the surreal. Her short stories have been published by Apex, Catapult, Flash Fiction Online, Pseudopod, and many more. She was a finalist in the Oxford Flash Fiction Contest 2022 and was longlisted for the Wigleaf Top 50 Small Fictions in 2023. Her longer work includes the novelette LOVE, HAPPINESS, AND ALL THE THINGS YOU MAY NOT BE DESTINED FOR (Assemble Media, 2022), her short story collection TURDUCKEN (Spaceboy, 2023), and her debut novel BEAST which will be announced soon. Lindz writes in English, Scots, and—haltingly—Gaelic. She is a full member of the SFWA, a mentor to myriad mentees in multiple fields, and is represented by Laura Zats at Headwater Literary Management. You can follow her on Twitter @lindzmcleod or find out more from her website, www.lindzmcleod.co.uk.

Anne-Louise Fortune is originally from Manchester, and moved to West Lothian in 2021. She is studying for a PhD in Film & Media at the University of Stirling. Anne currently writes socially-published short and long-form fiction, and is also writing a romance novel. Her scripts have been performed at the Greater Manchester Fringe Festival, where her 75-minute adaptation of Hamlet was award-nominated. Anne also writes review and comment pieces on a wide range of theatre productions, films, television programmes and books. She writes for Starburst, the UK’s longest running magazine for genre entertainment, as well as Brig, the University of Stirling’s award-winning newspaper.

Kirsty (pen name Cole Todd) loves writing fantasy, cozy fiction short stories, poetry and horror flash. She discovered her passion for writing after becoming disabled with ME. She won the EWC 2021 Flash Fiction Competition and was then published in the online literary journal The Horror Tree: Trembling With Fear. She had five poems published in Dreich magazine in August 2022, and self-publishes her Fairy Godmother comic fantasy novels. Kirsty has several short stories appearing in the People’s Friend magazine this year, and recently won the Writing for Children Competition adjudicated by Alastair Chisholm.

Shirley Muir writes memoir, short stories and poems. She is a mediaeval re-enactor, molecular biologist, and tarot reader. She enjoys the company of writers and learning from others, and she runs a writers’ group in East Lothian called Fidra Writers. She has just self-published a second anthology of their work. She won the first Crediton Festival short story competition in 2015 and the 2020 SAW non-fiction book award for a memoir of her experiences in the mountains of south west Turkey. Shirley has been published in the UK, USA and Australia, including Dear Damsels, The Eildon Tree, Dreich, InfectiveInk, and Didcot Writers.

Charlotte has been a club member since 2006 including serving as President. She loves the opportunity the club offers to explore new forms and styles. Having won a Sylvanian Family Tree House in a writing competition aged eight, Charlotte hopes not to have peaked too early! She has been surrounded by words throughout her career as Librarian, bookseller and now a fundraiser writing compelling copy to engage diverse audiences. Charlotte’s blog about life in the charity sector is published monthly in Third Force News. She was delighted to win the Dragon’s Pen at the 2023 SAW conference for her work in progress, an ecological crime thriller set in Australia.

Kate has been in the Club for about seventeen years and is a previous membership secretary. She has published five magazine serials and over 70 short stories, mostly in magazines including Woman’s Weekly, The People’s Friend, The Weekly News and Writers' Forum, and Woman's Day and Fast Fiction in Australia. In 2008 she won the Muriel Spark Short Story Prize, judged by Maggie O'Farrell; other stories have been long/short-listed for competitions such as the Jane Austen Short Story Award and the Scotsman/Orange Short Story Prize. Her novel, Stella’s Christmas Wish, set in Edinburgh and the Scottish Borders, is published by Black & White. She blogs at http://katewritesandreads.blogspot.com/