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 in 1999, and following their advice, Esther hasn’t looked back. As well as winning several writing competitions herself, she was head judge of Writers’ Forum magazine’s monthly short story competition. Over the years, Esther has regularly had articles and short stories published in a variety of newspapers and magazines in the UK and abroad. She has published a range of writing workbooks, children’s books and short story collections.

Esther became a tutor for The Writers Bureau in 2009 and when they closed in July 2026, she knew she wasn’t ready for it to go. Fortunately, they let her continue with the website and new courses so she can support students on their writing journey.

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 'Crossing the Hing', was published by Tears In The Fence in June 2026. Six poetry collections have been previously published: ‘The Daedalus Files’ (SPM Publications), ‘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

Andy obtained a degree in journalism in 1986 and started working with a local newspaper in the same year. He progressed to a regional newspaper and later, worked for a variety of magazines, based in London.

Around 1991 he decided to try life as a freelance writer. Since then he has written thousands of magazine and newspaper articles; his work is managed by two different agencies; one in the USA and one based in Sweden, for mainland Europe. His main focus now is business writing, especially for charities, where he helps them with their policies and procedures, strategies, annual reports, press releases and with writing tenders for contracts. 

Andy has been a tutor with The Writers Bureau since 1995 and over the years he has helped thousands of students develop their writing skills.

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’s short stories have appeared in numerous publications and have been awarded or shortlisted for prizes. He has also contributed articles for The Independent, Writing Magazine, and many other newspapers and magazines. In an earlier life his comedy sketches were broadcast on UK and European TV and radio. His non-fiction book “How To Write Comedy” was cited by The Stage newspaper as the training book of the year.

Tony teaches creative writing in colleges and venues across the country. He has led workshops at book festivals and given talks to writing groups.