The Team

Here's the team who put Words & Pictures together:

Gulfem Wormald

 Editor

Gulfem has over 20 years experience as a journalist. She worked as a full-time journalist for Cosmopolitan and ELLE magazines in Istanbul, Turkey and as Overseas Correspondent for FHM magazine in the UK alongside a career initially in banking and now, in education.

For the last eight years, she has been working for a leading Examination and Awarding Body. She is currently managing a project looking for ways of teaching GCSE and A-level qualifications with a wider focus on equality, diversity and inclusion. Linked to this project, she is developing a series of teacher training events.

Over a year ago, she started writing picture books. She has done a few courses and listened to hours of masterclasses and the more she’s learnt, the more she’s fallen in love with kidlit. She belongs to a SCBWI critique group, which she really enjoys being a part of.

Gulfem is so excited to be volunteering as part of the editorial team for Words & Pictures. She can’t wait to share her experience and learn from others. As her eight-year-old son would say after a playdate, "Thank you for having me!"

You can contact Gulfem at editor@britishscbwi.org 

Fran Price 
Acting Deputy Editor

@FranGPrice

Fran worked as Events Editor for four years, and is delighted to begin 2022 as Acting Deputy Editor.

She began her writing career managing contract magazine projects from initial brief through to publication and interviewing all sorts of people — from coastguards in Shetland, to Ruby Wax in London. She later worked as a freelance writer, editor and researcher, mainly for regional and national magazines, as well as a copywriter. More recently she’s been a teaching assistant and literacy volunteer.

Fran became hooked on writing children’s stories after a year studying Illustration at art college in Carmarthen, then taking an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Wales. Aquila Magazine published her story, Nicole and the Paper Witches, including her illustrations, in three issues, and she later transformed the story into a shadow puppet show for two local schools in Somerset, where she now lives with her family. She also performed her story There’s No Such Thing as Goblins at a local literacy event.

Fran writes mainly picture books and middle grade stories. She's been shortlisted and won second prize in the Slushpile Challenge and feels privileged to ‘give something back’ by volunteering for Words & Pictures.

You can contact Fran at deputyeditor@britishscbwi.org

Tracy Curran 

Production Editor

Tracy is incredibly excited about joining the Words & Pictures team as Production Editor. Words & Pictures has been her favourite Sunday morning read for the past couple of years and she feels privileged to be part of it. She’s also very nervous, though, so she hopes everyone will bear with her as she finds her feet and gets to know everyone.

SCBWI has been instrumental to her writing journey. Living in Cornwall means she is quite remote and it was through SCBWI that she found her online critique group who have become firm friends. It’s also allowed her to access incredible events and it’s challenged her writing too - she loves the Slush Pile Challenges and one day hopes to be successful in one.

When she isn’t caring for her children, including a daughter with SEN, she writes and reviews picture books, chapter books and lower middle grade fiction. She is currently a mentee on the All Stories Mentorship and one of her picture books, Pumpkin’s Fairytale, was published by an indie publisher called Final Chapter at the end of September. Now it’s time for her to give something back to the writing community that has been so wonderfully supportive and welcoming.

---

Features Editors

Tita Berredo

Illustration Feature Editor 

Tita is a children's writer and illustrator born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She has a Master's degree in Children's Literature and Illustration from Goldsmiths, University of London, and a background in social communications having worked for a decade with marketing and publicity. She lives in Scotland, where she supports local children's writers by coordinating the Glasgow SCBWI Hub, the AOI’s group, and the Scottish CWIG as a committee member of the Society of Authors. Tita is represented by Fairbank Literary Representation, and is a picture book reviewer for My Book Corner. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram

You can contact Tita at illustrators@britishscbwi.org

Anna Gamble (nee Rymer)

Acting Events Editor and Social Media Editor

Originally from Yorkshire, Anna now lives on the Wirral in Merseyside. She writes mostly for fun – working on a mixture of adult short fiction, picture book texts and middle-grade fantasy – although she may take it seriously one day. Her writing has appeared in online journals and anthologies including The Sirens Call, the Same Journal and the National Flash Fiction Day Anthology. She also publishes short fiction and book reviews on her blog. A postgraduate in Performance & Cultural Industries, Anna has been working with the transformative power of stories over a sixteen-year career in the arts and is currently pursuing a new career in publishing.  Follow her on twitter.

You can contact Anna at events@britishscbwi.org

Anne Boyere
Network News Editor

Twitter @AmusedNonQueen

Anne is a writer and a breastfeeding counsellor. She is fluent in English and French but, please, don't ask her to do maths in English or her brain will fry. You can ask her about her four children, husband and cat and she will happily tell you all about them until you beg for mercy. She won the 2018 Winchester's Writers' Festival prize in Funny Fiction for her story about a grandmother were-cow, which she is determined to submit to agents till the cows come home. In her spare time she murders violin pieces or dreams about being invited to Desert Island Discs (spoiler: her book of choice would be Eloise).

Elaine Cline

Writing Competitions Editor 

 

@elaineclineuk

Elaine is the Writing Competitions Editor and coordinates the quarterly Slush Pile Challenge. She loves to write picture books, middle-grade and teen books. She lives by the sea and has a soft and silly cat and a dog.

Nick Cross

Blog Network Editor

@nick_w_cross

When Nick isn't reading blog posts, he works for Oxford Dictionaries, helping to bring their unique dictionary content to life through digital services. A devoted student of the English language, Nick is an Undiscovered Voices winner who has published over 10 short stories for children, and in 2015 was honours winner of the SCBWI Magazine Merit Award for fiction. He is an illustrator as well as a writer, and loves to create novels that combine words and pictures in exciting new ways.

Hannah Fletcher

Writing Features Editor

Based in North East England, Hannah has worked in the written word world for the past ten years including positions in bookselling, publicity and as a Co-Editor in Chief of a literary magazine. Her time is currently spent as a writing feedback tutor and managing her own creative writing business for children. She is passionate about children’s literature and is currently working on her Middle Grade Fantasy novel called Fable Quinn and the Storyteller’s Scroll. 

Alison Padley-Woods

Deputy Illustration Features Editor

Alison Padley-Woods has been writing for as long as she can remember: for the school magazine, for the student paper at Leeds University and for Conde Nast’s Brides Magazine where she became the Home Editor, writing and styling features. Taking a career break to bring up her three children, Alison completed a Creative Writing MA, specialising in children’s fiction, at Manchester Metropolitan University. Since then her short stories have been included in three anthologies, including Time Travellers and the Crystal Dome —Stories from the Portico Library. She’s been longlisted for the Bath Children’s Novel Award and shortlisted for the Times Chicken House Competition, and Writing Magazine’s Picture Book Prize.

Julie Sullivan

Writing Features Editor

@Webwight

Julie is an American translator (French and German to English) and copy editor and has lived most of her adult life outside the USA. Her four children all went to school in England but only the youngest can switch from one accent to the other on demand. Julie studies classical Chinese for fun (信而好古!), writes historical fiction, and loves the friends she has met volunteering for SCBWI.

BeeBee Taylor 

Celebrations Editor

@BB_Taylor_

Professional daydreamer BB Taylor accidentally discovered a love of telling stories through her animals and visiting schools teaching about weird n wonderful animals of different shapes and sizes. From there she was hooked. A enthusiastic author from Birmingham, she loves to travel, sharing stories from her books featuring everything from raccoons and fairies to yetis and zombies.

You can contact BB at celebrations@britishscbwi.org

Julia Tuffs

Writing Features Editor

Jo. E. Verrill

Knowhow Editor

@verrillverrill

Jo used to work at a radio station, telling off presenters for swearing on air, but has recently quit to pursue her dream of being the funniest children’s writer in the world. She has finished four books to date, which are too good for publication. Jo does not photograph well.

You can contact Jo at knowhow@britishscbwi.org

Natalie Yates

Writing Features Editor

When she’s not working as a Teaching Assistant in the local secondary school, Natalie loves to write for young adults. Around family life and writing, she also manages to fit in her role as a SCBWI Networks Coordinator for the North East. She loves to write contemporary realistic novels and was longlisted for the Commonword Diversity Writing for Children prize in 2016, the year in which she also gained an MA in Creative Writing from Hull University. As well as editor for some writing features, Natalie also organises Opening Lines.

You can contact Natalie at features1@britishscbwi.org

---

Subeditors

Fran Benson

Fran is a journalist and copywriter, works for a health charity, does the bookkeeping for her husband's business and runs a popular book club at her local primary school. She has three children and a dog. In her spare time she's redrafting a middle grade fantasy which was longlisted for the Bath Children's Novel Award last year. You can say hello on Twitter @journalistfran.

Joan Longstaff

Joan lives in Cambridgeshire and, after spending 25 years in the publishing arm of RNIB where she turned other people's stories into braille, large print and audio, she decided to turn her hand to writing her own. Picture books are her passion and she finds inspiration comes best when there's a healthy supply of tea and biscuits on tap. Follow her on Twitter @joan_longstaff

Natalie Lucy

 

Trained as a lawyer, Natalie took the opportunity to rethink her career choice after having her two children. Now in the latter stages of a PhD in Literature, she also loves to write. Her first two manuscripts for YA were Shortlisted for the Wells Book for Children and were also both Longlisted for the WriteMentor Children’s Novel Award. 

---

Writers & Columnists

Natascha Biebow

Natascha Biebow is an experienced children's book editor, mentor and coach. She is the founder of www.blueelephantstoryshaping.com a coaching and mentoring service aimed at helping children's authors and illustrators to shape their picture books, young fiction and novels pre-submission.  Passionate about picture books, she writes the bi-monthly Picture Book Storyshaper column for W & P, and blogs at Picture Book Den. She is the author of  The Crayon Man: The True Story of the Invention of Crayola Crayons, winner of the Irma Black Award and a best STEM book. She has been the co-RA (Chair) of SCBWI British Isles since 1998, and in 2018 was awarded SCBWI Stephen Mooser Member of the Year and an MBE for services to children's authors and illustrators.

Sarah Broadley

Sarah Broadley lives in Edinburgh with her family and two cats. She is a member of SCBWI Scotland. Follow her on Twitter.

Caroline Deacon

Caroline Deacon lives in Edinburgh and is the author of several childcare books. She now writes MG and YA and is agented by Lindsay Fraser of Fraser Ross Associates, Edinburgh. Find her on Twitter @writingdilemmas and at www.carolinedeacon.com

Elizabeth Frattaroli

Elizabeth Frattaroli is a YA and MG writer who lives by the sea near Dundee, and is one of the team behind the WriteMAGIC writing community. She has been longlisted in The Bath Children’s Novel Award, the Mslexia Children’s Novel Award and the WriteMentor Children's Novel Award and, as of 2020, is also a golden egg with the newly launched GEA Scotland. She is on Twitter @ELIZFRAT.

Tizzie Frankish

@tizzief

After having spent most of her 20’s travelling and studying or travelling to study, Tizzie settled back in her home town of Coventry and into a 15-year career in further education; teaching ESOL, English and assessing learners with dyslexia. By day, she is a mum to two boisterous boys and a part-time university tutor; by night, an agented writer who is plagued by her characters. She has dabbled in poetry, picture books and has short stories published in anthologies, but is currently working on a number of young fiction stories. Her works are often humorous and more often than not include animals; even if she starts out thinking they won’t. Tizzie is an Assistant Writer for Writing West Midlands; Spark Young Writers, the founder of Mighty Writers: Creative Writing Workshops and in 2016 she was selected for the Teachers 204 Writers Development programme. The only time her mind is writing free is when she is exploring her make believe worlds or doing yoga in this one.

Helen Simmons

Helen is a writer of YA fiction, a full time drama teacher and a reader of anything and everything. When she is not putting on shows, reading or writing, Helen loves to walk in wild places, or hang out with her family and friends in London, France and Cornwall.

Kate Walker

@KatakusM

Kate  mainly writes MG fantasy as well as dabbling in picture books whenever a character grabs her imagination. Kate lives in Kent with her two children who are addicted to stories just as much as she is.

---

Art Director

Suzanne Dore

Suzanne Dore is a freelance graphic designer, illustrator and writer. She graduated in Fine Art (Printmaking), has completed many Children’s Book writing and illustration courses and is currently being mentored by Giuseppe Castellano. She joined the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) in 2015, and regularly attends SCBWI workshops and retreats.

Suzanne has been long-listed twice for Undiscovered Voices; short-listed twice for Templar Publishing’s Illustration awards, and won third place in their Non-Fiction Illustration category in 2020.
She is currently unpublished and seeking representation.