Anna Chen was born and raised in Hackney, east London, to a Chinese father and Dagenham mother. She freelances as a writer and performer, makes documentaries for BBC Radio 4 and is a presenter for the alternative radio station Resonance FM. Her stage shows include
Suzy Wrong: Human Cannon at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival,
The Steampunk Opium Wars at the National Maritime Museum, and
Anna May Wong Must Die!. She is a regular at the St Ives Festivals and blogs at Madame Miaow Says,
madammiaow.blogspot.co.uk, which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2010. Her website is
annachen.com.
Charles Shaar Murray was born in London in 1951, and began his career in 1970 as one of the participants in the notorious
Oz Schoolkids’ Issue. He joined
New Musical Express two years later and eventually became
NME’s associate editor before returning to freelancing in 1981. He is the author of
Crosstown Traffic (1989), a critical study of the life and work of Jimi Hendrix (new edition 2012) and
Boogie Man (2000), a biography of John Lee Hooker (new edition 2011). His first novel,
The Hellhound Sample, was published in 2011. His website is
charlesshaarmurray.com.
Paul Anderson was born in 1959 in Edinburgh and grew up in Suffolk. He was deputy editor of
European Nuclear Disarmament Journal 1984-87, reviews editor of
Tribune 1986-91 and then editor 1991-93, deputy editor of
New Statesman & Society 1993-96, news editor of
Red Pepper 1997-99 and deputy editor of
New Times 1999-2000. He writes a column for
Tribune and works as a freelance writer, editor and lecturer. He wrote
Safety First: The Making of New Labour with Nyta Mann (1997) and compiled and edited
Orwell in Tribune
: ‘As I Please’ and Other Writings (2006). He blogs at Gauche,
libsoc.blogspot.com.
Kevin Davey was born in 1957 in Suffolk. He left school at 16 and was involved with the International Socialists while working in factories in Leicester and Margate before going to the University of Kent in Canterbury. He taught in higher and further education during the 1980s, chaired the Socialist Society and the Socialist Movement, and was a regular contributor to
Tribune and
New Statesman & Society in the 1980s and 1990s. He edited
New Times 1999-2000. His book
English Imaginaries: Anglo-British Approaches to Modernity (1999) was widely critically acclaimed.
