Cambridge Wordfest Team
The Cambridge Wordfest team is made up of individuals from business, arts, academic, publishing and public service backgrounds. The full committee consists of:
Festival Director
Cathy Moore
Festival Manager
Alison Thomson
Programming
Jo Browning-Wroe
Rachel Calder
Mary Nathan
Communications
Michelle Golder
General Advisory Group
Helen Taylor
Jonathan Woods
Charlotte Sankey
Vera-Schuster Beesley
Chas Simms
Festival Patrons
Cambridge Wordfest now has four festival Patrons all of whom are prominent writers from the region and have appeared at the festival:
Dame Gillian Beer
Distinguished critic and recent King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at the University of Cambridge, Dame Gillian Beer is currently President of the British Comparative Literature Association and on the Council of Arts Council England, East. She is in the final stages of a new book called Alice in Space.
Rowan Pelling
Rowan Pelling is a columnist for the Independent on Sunday and regularly writes for a wide variety of other publications. She is a regular guest on Radio 4, is a former Man Booker Prize judge and edited The Decadent Handbook (2006). Until recently, she was also the editor of The Erotic Review, which she helped to transform from a foolscap newsletter to a popular magazine.
Ali Smith
Whitbread Novel of the Year winner for The Accidental (2004), Ali Smith’s latest book is The First Person and Other Stories, a dazzling collection of short stories. She is also a regular contributor of articles and reviews to journals and newspapers including The Scotsman, The Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement.
Rebecca Stott
Rebecca Stott is a writer and broadcaster. She writes both fiction and non-fiction, is affiliated to the Cambridge history of science department and is Professor of English Literature and Creative Writing at UEA. Her work, in radio writing, fiction and non-fiction, weaves together history, literature and the history of science. Rebecca has written two novels, Ghostwalk and her latest The Coral Thief. She is also the author of the non-fiction title Darwin and the Barnacle.
