Meet Our Tutors and Workshop Leaders

The folk who will help you be the best writer you can be.

Esther Chilton

Since joining The Writers Bureau as a student many years ago, Esther hasn’t looked back and now writes and tutors full-time. She regularly has articles and short stories published in a variety of newspapers and magazines in the UK and abroad, ranging from The Guardian, to The People’s Friend, to Writing Magazine. As well as winning writing competitions herself, Esther has judged many, including Writers’ Forum magazine’s monthly short story competition. She is currently working with a publisher on a range of non-fiction books on writing.

Mandy Pannett

Mandy Pannett lives in West Sussex. She taught children with special needs for many years but now works freelance as a creative writing tutor for adults.

Her poetry pamphlet ‘The Daedalus Files’ was published by SPM Publications in 2021. Five poetry collections have been previously published: ‘Bee Purple’ and ‘Frost Hollow’ (Oversteps Books), ‘Allotments in the Orbital’ (Searle Publishing), ‘All the Invisibles’ (SPM Publications), ‘Jongleur in the Courtyard’ (Indigo Dreams Publishing). A selection of her poems, ‘Ladders of Glass’, was issued by Integral Contemporary Literature Press with English and Romanian parallel texts.

She enjoys writing short fiction as well and two years ago won a national competition for Vignette writing. She has also judged competitions for Flash Fiction. Two novellas have been published by Independent Presses: ‘The Onion Stone’ (Pewter Rose Press) and ‘The Wulf Enigma’ (Circaidy Gregory Press).

Mandy was also poetry editor for five years for Sentinel Literary Quarterly and has edited anthologies and poetry collections for them and for Earlyworks Press. She has acted as an adjudicator for national competitions and won prizes and been placed herself in several others.

For the last eighteen months she has been collaborating with artist Polly Dutton and musicians Terry Pack and The Full Circle Quartet on ‘The South Downs Suite’, a poetry/music/art project inspired by the South Downs. The Suite is currently being performed at several venues in the area and a book of all the art work and poetry is on sale at events and in galleries and museums.

Andy Ellis

Married in 1981 to Pat: Two sons - Craig and Liam. Obtained a degree in journalism in 1986, starting working with a local local newspaper in the same year. Progressed to a regional newspaper and later, worked for a variety of magazines, based in London.

Around 1991 decided to try life as a freelance writer. Have written thousands of magazine and newspaper articles; my work is managed by two different agencies; one in the USA and one based in Sweden, for mainland Europe. Main focus now is Business writing, especially for charities, where I help them with their policies and procedures, strategies, annual reports, press releases and with writing tenders for contracts. Leisure: My allotment - my escape from the hustle and bustle of life.

Stephanie Baudet

Stephanie was born in England but grew up in Australia and New Zealand. She returned to the UK after qualifying as a nurse, got married, and stayed. She is the author of over 80 books for children, the most recent being several series for Sweet Cherry Publishing including Mr Pattacake (10 book set), The Dinosaur Detectives (6 book set), Sherlock Holmes for Children (3 x 10 book sets) and The Bronte Books retold for children (8 book set). Stephanie has been a tutor with The Writers Bureau for twenty years. She lives in Buckinghamshire next door to her daughter and family.

www.stephaniebaudet.com

Sara Mace

Sara Mace has been a journalist since 1972, starting as a reporter and working her way through the ranks to editor. She has worked on a number of publications, mainly newspapers, one of which she produced alone from home during lockdown. She has been a Writers Bureau tutor since 1993 and teaches journalism, non-fiction writing, and proofreading and copy editing.

Phil Busby

A playwright, singer-songwriter and author, Phil works in course development for The Writers Bureau, Manchester. Originally a psychiatric nurse, he studied Theatre at Dartington College of Arts before working across Europe for ten years as a performer, writer and workshop leader. Phil is a co-founder of Budding Writers.

Rob Keeley

Rob Keeley is an award-winning author of children's novels, short stories and picture books, including the Spirits series. Other credits include the award-listed stage play Mr. Everyone, the murder mystery Death At Friar's Inn, and Chain Gang and Newsjack for BBC Radio. He holds author workshops in schools and libraries, and teaches Creative Writing to children and adults.

For more information on Rob, visit www.robkeeley.co.uk or follow him on Twitter/X @RobKeeleyAuthor.

Tony Kirwood

Tony writes fiction, articles and comedy sketches. Much of his work is humorous although sometimes it's scary. Sometimes it's both. His non-scary book How To Write Comedy was cited by the Stage Newspaper as the best training book of the year. He’s had stories in the fantasy genre published and read out. His column The Blog of Samuel Pepys appeared regularly in The Greenwich Visitor paper.

Tony teaches creative writing, comedy writing, comedy appreciation and drama in colleges and venues across the country. He tutors regular classes at Richmond and Hillcroft Adult Community College in South London. He has also led workshops at literary festivals and similar events.