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
Susannah Gibson
Programming
Jo Browning Wroe
Rachel Calder
Anna Whitelock
Trustees
Denise Augar
Rachel Calder
Michelle Golder
Stella G Manzie
Cathy Moore
Peter Taylor
Festival Patrons
Cambridge Wordfest now has six 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.
Robert MacFarlane
Robert Macfarlane’s Mountains of the Mind won the 2003 Guardian First Book Award. He is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge and the author, most recently, of The Wild Places and The Old Ways. Robert is chair of the Man Booker Prize committee 2013.
Robert McCrum
Robert McCrum is associate editor at The Observer. He has also been editor in chief at the publishers Faber & Faber; has written six novels and many non-fiction books; and has been literary editor at The Observer.
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 is also the author of The First Person and Other Stories, Artful and Shire. She is 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 and she is the author of the best-selling Darwin and the Barnacle. Rebecca has written two novels, Ghostwalk and her latest The Coral Thief.
Anna Whitelock
Anna Whitelock is a historian at Royal Holloway, University of London, specialising in early modern political history. Her best-selling Mary Tudor was published in 2009, and her latest book is Elizabeth's Bedfellows (2013). Anna is a regular broadcaster and commentator on issues related to the British monarchy, the royal family, the Tudors and the Stuarts.
