Mslexia

Mslexia, the magazine for women who write | www.mslexia.co.uk

About the magazine

Debbie Taylor

Editorial Director

Debbie Taylor is the founder of Mslexia and is now its Editorial Director. She studied at University College London, where she gained a First in Psychology, followed by a PhD, then took up a fellowship at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases. Her career as a writer began in a village on the edge of the Kalahari Desert, where she began writing about what used to be called the Third World. Since then she has worked as Editor at New Internationalist and Writing Women magazines and as writer, researcher, project manager for many organisations, including Oxfam, Anti Slavery, BBC 2, Channel 4, UNICEF, WHO. Her full-length books of fiction and non-fiction include Women: A World Report (Methuen), My Children, My Gold (Virago), The Fourth Queen (Penguin) and Hungry Ghosts (Penguin). She grows all her own veggies and lives in a decommissioned lighthouse at the mouth of the Tyne with poet W N Herbert and their daughter Isobel.

Claire Malcolm

Partnerships Director

Claire is the Director of New Writing North, the writing development agency for the North East of England. She is a graduate of the Cultural Leadership MA at City University and in 2006 received a New Writing Encouragement Award from the Writer’s Guild of Great Britain for her work with writers. At New Writing North she leads on writer development, festival production, publishing, commissioning and strategic and business development. She is a Specialist Advisor on Literature for Creative Scotland and a board member of Bridge and Tunnel Voices and Designed and Made.

Danuta Kean

Books Editor

Danuta Kean is books editor of Mslexia and deputy director of the Creative Enterprise Centre at Brunel University, where she also lectures MA creative writing students on publishing. She is respected as a trenchant analyst of the book industry and wider media, her work appears in national media including the Financial Times, Independent and Daily Mail, as well as a variety of publishing websites and publications. As well as books, she is passionate about film and music. You can follow her on Twitter @Danoosha.

Isabel Smales

Finance

Isabel joined Mslexia in the Spring of 1999, narrowly missing the first issue, and has been shackled to the finances and administration ever since. Despite the years these will be the first words that she has contributed for wider circulation.
She is a qualified accountant and has a number of years experience in such varied fields as cattle breeding, farming and estate management, and retailing. She has two grown-up rugby playing sons, is an active Pony Club mother and commentates and stewards at horse trials up and down the country. When not working she enjoys sailing and when other commitments allow she plans to circumnavigate the world.

Helen Baynes

Administration Manager

Helen Baynes has an undergraduate degree in English studies from Stirling University and a postgraduate Masters in arts management from Northumbria University. Home is a working dairy farm in the village of Slaley, Northumberland, where she lives with her husband Richard, her son Tom, and a whole menagerie of animals including a dog, three cats, chickens, and of course a whole herd of pedigree Shorthorn & Ayrshire cows.

Martha lane

Sales and Subscriptions Manager

Since the impressionable age of 17 Martha has worked with books in various settings, and she wouldn’t have it any other way. She appreciates most literature but for her nothing will ever beat a good novel. Since moving to Newcastle four years ago she has fallen in love with it, and with a few more years of practising the accent feels she will blend in perfectly!
It is her ambition to see her name in print so sees Mslexia as a very good start.

Sophie Baker

Marketing and Web Manager

Sophie Baker is Mslexia's marketing and web manager and a graduate from the MA in Creative Writing at Newcastle University. She is a poet who recently won the Andrew Waterhouse Award from New Writing North, blogs at www.just-somestuff.blogspot.com and tweets as @sophiefbaker. She enjoys baking (true to her name), writing poems and reviews, photography, camping, ballroom dancing, cats, travelling by train and drinking too much coffee in cafés around Newcastle.

Victoria Levay

Directory and Advertising Sales Manager

Victoria has recently graduated from Newcastle University with a Creative Writing Masters and is set to begin her literary career as administrative assistant here at Mslexia. She is passionate about all kinds of literature and has a lifelong love of film which she indulges far too frequently at the local cinema. She has just completed her first feature length screenplay and one day hopes to see her work appear on screen. Aside from writing she loves a good book, travelling back to the shire to see her family and of course, a deep pan pizza.

Laura Brewis

Project Manager

Laura Brewis possibly spends too much time thinking about books. She has a BA and MA from Newcastle University and now works as a freelance arts worker and administrator. As well as currently occupying the admin chair at Mslexia, she is also an arts journalist, a teacher of literature and creative writing and coordinator of a multitude of book groups in community settings all over Sunderland. When not reading she enjoys dancing, swimming, old films, drinking tea and hatching feminist plots to take over the world. One day she dreams of opening the finest independent bookshop in the region.

Carolyn Jess-cooke

Poetry Advisor

Carolyn Jess-Cooke lives in Gateshead. Recipient of an Eric Gregory Award, a major Arts Council Award, the Tyrone Guthrie Prize for poetry, a Northern Promise Award for Poetry, and a prize in the Cardiff Academi International Poetry Competition, she has published her poems everywhere from Poetry London to the The Stinging Fly. Her poetry collection, Inroads is published by Seren, and she has also published 4 nonfiction books in film. She likes chocolate, writing in the bath, and is addicted to buying pyjamas.