NSSF Festival Team is made up of individuals with a passion for the written word with a variety of backgrounds.
- Fiona Gell – Festival Director
- Anna Chilvers – Academy Facilitator
- SJ Bradley – Editor, Northern Short Story Festival Academy Anthology
- Molly Magrath – Digital Content Creator
Fiona Gell
Fiona is a founder member and Director of the Leeds Big Bookend and Northern Short Story Festival. She has put on hundreds of literary events in Leeds over the last 10 years. She is a founder member of Leeds Lit Fest which won Best Literary Festival at the Saboteur Awards 2020. She works as the Marketing and Communications Officer at The Leeds Library.
Anna Chilvers
Anna is a writer, a runner, a long-distance walker, a mother, a teacher and a reader.She is the Academy Facilitator of the Northern Short Story Festival. Her most recent novel, Tainted Love, was published in 2016, and her first, Falling Through Clouds, in 2010 (both Bluemoose Books). She has also published a collection of short stories, Legging It (Pennine Prospects, 2012) and her play, The Room was performed at the Hebden Bridge Arts Festival 2013. Anna is particularly interested in the links between writing, walking and the landscape. She is currently working on her next novel, East Coast Road, as well as a PhD on writing and walking in woodland.
SJ Bradley
SJ is a writer, editor, and organiser from Leeds, UK. She is a K Blundell Trust Award winner, a Saboteur Award winner (Remembering Oluwale, Valley Press: Best Anthology, 2017), and past Director of the Northern Short Story Festival. Her short fiction has appeared in Litro, Disclaimer, Queen Mobs, and Conradology (Comma Press). In 2013 she was shortlisted for the Willesden Herald Short Story Prize. Her second novel, Guest, is out now from Dead Ink Books.
Molly Magrath
Molly is a freelance digital content creator for the Northern Short Story Festival and Leeds Big Bookend as well as a Library Projects Assistant. Originally from Cambridgeshire, she now lives in Leeds.