Vaila Boston lives and works in Shetland. Her first published work was a poem in a school magazine when she was 6. She hopes there are no copies of that still around. In 1984 she won runners up prize in the Woman's Own Short Story Competition. She says, "I got a bit full of myself after that, but was soon brought back down to earth by the flood of rejection letters." Her job entails writing business letters, and for a while that stemmed her creative flow, although she maintains "in the long-term I think my work has benefited as I have learnt to be more concise".

Doug Forrest, who has in recent years had a number of his excellent poems published in a variety of magazines, refers to himself as a late starter. He has had an interest in words from an early age but he says, "the emphasis was on the structure of language and on the works of the great classical writers. We were not given great encouragement to be creative". So it is only now, having retired from a career in teaching that he is finding his own voice. Speaking about his writing, Doug says, "I love the creative process and I have enjoyed a great deal of encouragement and support from my local writers' group. I have also benefited from having the chance to attend workshops and writing courses."

Rachel Eunson is an engineer who also writes. Although she is currently working at Lerwick's Waste to Energy plant, she is liable to run away back to sea at any time. She began writing poetry at high school and is currently studying for a BA in English with the Open University. She has had poems published in The New Shetlander and other places. Rachel's main impetus for writing is to fill all the notebooks she compulsively buys.

Matthew Wright was born in 1975 and brought up in Kirkwall, Orkney. He now lives in Hamnavoe, Burra in Shetland. He writes about childhood, the pub and anything else he can get away with. His work has appeared in The Pull of the Moon, The New Shetlander, Shetland Life, Sucking Mud and Northwords. He has read his work in Orkney, Shetland, Aberdeen, Faroe and Iceland. He recently published a selection of short stories about life in a Kirkwall bar called Topping Up.

Singer-songwriter Jordan Ogg was born close to a cliff edge in the Shetland Islands in 1982. Here he grew up among 96,473 amorous sheep, 4 angry ponies, 6 sheepish hens, and 1 sexually confused collie. His songs conjure tales of wishing wells; Gothic romance; a fight between spring and summer; ghosts in the floorboards; and time travel back to the haze of 1970s New York.

Now based in Edinburgh, Jordan's musical career has so far been marked by many wonderful experiences, the most recent of which include a live session on Tom Morton's BBC Radio Scotland show, and playing the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow. His debut album, Before The Wind is out now.

Read more on www.myspace.com/jordanogg.

Helen Elizabeth Ramsey is defined by constant change, and her writing is similarly influenced, drawing inspirations from all the places she has lived and jobs she has sampled. She spent a year as President of the Creative Writing Society at Aberdeen University, where she also discovered a taste for public readings. Her short stories are published in their anthologies, including Freeze.

Born in Thailand and now resident in Aberdeenshire, Chris Andrews writes poetry, plays and prose. He has published a book of his father's poetry in association with Peacock Visual Arts.

He designs and works with gardens and landscape. His interests are the visual arts and photography. He sees writing as a discovery of another landscape in which words are snapshots.

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Supported by

Awards for All
Aberdeen Arts Centre
Shetland Arts
Station Hotel