Jamie Hale is a writer, performer and director who works across poetry, essay, script, and stage exploring the interactions between the body, impairment, nature and environment. They curate CRIPtic, a d/Deaf and disabled creative programme, and have had work published in Rialto, Magma, the Guardian, and their own pamphlet, Shield (Verve Press, 2021). They won Evening Standard Future Theatre Fund Director/Theatremaker of the Year award for their solo show NOT DYING, and their work with CRIPtic, which will feature as a showcase of d/Deaf and disabled artists at the Barbican in Autumn 2021.

Jamie is leading the June Salon workshop.

Antonia Jade King is one of the hosts of Boomerang Club, and a previous Hammer & Tongue finalist. She has featured at Poetry and Shaah and Heaux Noire and was part of Apples and Snakes Writing Room programme in 2018. She has performed at numerous events including Love Supreme festival and Rallying Cry at Battersea Arts Centre. She was also a Barbican Young Poet and her debut pamphlet ‘She Too Is a Sailor’ is out with Bad Betty Press.

Jenny is a Welsh based artist and writer who often engages with themes around identity, expression, politics, and equality. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to creating; Jenny often combines poetry and spoken word with movement, video, and installation.

Mainly writing poetry and short fiction, Jenny’s written work often engages with the everyday: using it as backdrop to comment on larger questions, thoughts, and contemporary political and societal issues.

Jenny has previously taught creative writing and holds a degree in English Literature and Creative Writing.

Hayleigh Barclay is a Scottish based writer and disability rights campaigner. She obtained a Doctorate of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow in 2019. Her thesis researched 19^th century Gothic vampire literature and involved writing her debut novel, Girl of the Ashes which was published in 2020. She writes short stories for the online magazine Disability Horizons. The stories blend dark humour and disabled characters to reinforce that disability needn’t be a taboo subject.

During the pandemic she co-edited an anthology of stories/poems with proceeds going to The Ambulance Staff Charity. Avid scriptwriter. Teller of bad jokes!

Shannon Yee (Sickels) is an award-winning writer and producer. Her perspectives as an immigrant, ethnic minority, queer artist-parent with a disability living in NI are deeply embedded in her work. Shannon has received a number of awards and grants, including the ACNI Major Individual Artist Award (2017). Her Reassembled, Slightly Askew sonically immerses audiences in her autobiographical experience of nearly dying and subsequent acquired brain injury (www.reassembled.co.uk) , touring locally, nationally and internationally in arts festivals and medical training settings since 2015. Shannon’s published short stories are ‘The Brightening Up Side’( Belfast Stories; Doire Press, 2019), and ‘Thumbnails’ (Queer Love: An Irish Anthology; Southward, 2020). www.s-yee.co.uk

Tom is a writer, theatre maker and producer who focuses on changing who gets to imagine the future by revealing how the things we take for granted as fundamental in our lives, are actually just made up nonsense.

His work has been seen at Theatre Royal Stratford East, Shoreditch Town Hall, Camden People’s Theatre, Pleasance, Theatre503 and he is currently developing a digital piece as part of CRIPtic 2021 at The Barbican.

“Can You See Into a Black Hole?” is a solo show about his own experience of growing up with epilepsy. It was made in collaboration with his parents and follows the real story of his family. He wanted to be an astronaut but when he had his first seizure aged 8 and a black hole opened up inside his head – that had to change. Instead he goes on an epic adventure to understand the black hole in his brain. “Can You See Into a Black Hole?” is an imaginative attempt to remove epilepsy from the medical model and demonstrate that the thing that makes the condition difficult is not the seizures – but the way in which the world is built.

Penny Pepper is an acclaimed wheelchair-using author, poet, performer & disabled activist. A genre-defying and versatile writer, her work focuses on the examination of difference, inequality and identity. She tells stories we haven’t heard, making others see life differently, always with humour and wisdom. Her champions include Jake Arnott, Margaret Drabble and Danuta Keene. Most recently she has been selected as a finalist in the prestigious international Hemingway Shorts 2021 Competition and her winning story will be published in their competition anthology.

Penny published her groundbreaking memoir, First in The World Somewhere with Unbound and a poetry collection, Come Home Alive, with Burning Eye Books. She is now signed to The Good Literary Agency where she is represented by Abi Fellows. She has also been widely published including Mslexia, The Guardian, Byline Times amongst others.

Image of Penny by Jonny Bosworth

Ayesha is a writer and multimedia artist who aims to use her artwork for political means, opening up safe spaces for conversation about difficult topics. Often her work draws on personal experience of disability. Her poetry has been shown in the ‘Song of Myself’ Poetry Jukebox at Belfast International Arts Festival, at ‘Mr W et al’, a celebratory event exploring art and disability in Hackney Wick, and in ‘Deaf Experience’, an online short film screening of films by deaf and hard-of-hearing creators, organised by The Film Bunch. She is currently writing her MA dissertation whilst working for Creative Estuary.

Sonny Nwachukwu is a writer, director, choreographer and performer based in London. His work is multi-disciplinary spanning across writing, poetry, dance, theatre and anything that lies beyond. His work primarily focuses on the African and Caribbean Diaspora.

Sonny is a storyteller that incorporates dance and literature making his work relevant, unique, vibrant and thought-provoking. His  background in Psychology informs much of his work and he is keen to tackle issues seen as taboo or ‘different’.

Inigo Purcell is a graduate student and writer from London. He is currently studying a PhD about Arthurian legend at the University of Bristol and Macquarie University. He previously studied at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge and Oxford Brookes University. In 2017 he was selected for the Moth magazine’s residency for writers under 30. His novel about the long term fallout of a political sex scandal, An Entirely Different Person, was recently selected for the Hachette Future Bookshelf scheme. He enjoys knitting, jigsaws, and getting very intensely interested in popular fiction from the mid twentieth century.

Betty Doyle is a poet and student from Liverpool. Her poetry has been published in Cake, Brag, Smoke, Lunate, Re-Side, and Sink amongst others, and has been accepted for Agenda’s Young Poets series. She was longlisted for the Mslexia Women’s Poetry Prize 2018, judged by Carol Ann Duffy. From 2014-2016, she was poetry editor for Flash Journal Lancaster.

She is currently studying for a PhD in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University, where she is researching infertility poetry. She has a physical disability called Arthrogryposis.

Her debut poetry pamphlet, Girl Parts, will be published by Verve Poetry Press in March 2022. Twitter: betty_poet