Vanya Bagaev (Vanechka) is a Russian-British writer and translator, and founder of the samizdat press nova·nevédoma (nova-nevedoma.com). His most recent novels are Tulubaikaporia (2026), about a vanishing Russian village and the people trying to escape it or return to it, and Deleted Scenes from the Bestselling Utopian Novel (2024), a dystopian satire and psychological horror about a fictional reflection of contemporary Russia. Vanya’s work has been shortlisted for the Saroyan International Prize for Short Fiction and has appeared in the Republic of Letters, Apocrypha, SUM FLUX and Soaring Twenties, among other places.

Rori Montford is an award winning designer and illustrator of tabletop roleplaying games. She is known for thoughtful and beautiful games for solo players, with optional group play, requiring no preparation or game leader. Her most recent game is Asher’s Ridge, where you create episodes of a paranormal drama television show in the style of Twin Peaks or The X-Files in a remote area of the Lake District.

Everything she makes is 100% human made, from start to finish.

“No-one has to live with chronic pain! In my book “Back in Charge” I relate my personal story of recovering from fourteen years of chronic back pain, after learning about the connection between mind and body. The journey of recovery I then pursued restored me to full health and quite simply transformed my life.
Determined to spread the message about this powerful method of healing I wrote “Back in Charge”, which blends a personal narrative with information from the relevant professionals, including Dr John Sarno, Dr Howard Schubiner and British physiotherapist Georgie Oldfield, founder of SIRPA. This gives the book wide appeal and an immediate readability. The text is often upbeat and humorous, and contains many pointers for readers who might also be suffering from chronic pain or other unexplained symptoms. There is hope, there is a way of healing and there is a pain-free life to be enjoyed and celebrated.

Back in Charge has featured in “Pain News”, the journal of the British Pain Society, and in “Saga” magazine. A video interview with Georgie Oldfield is available to watch on the SIRPA website.

I have also written a novel called “Debbie’s Memorable Year”, available from Amazon.

Information about the author
Elizabeth Reilly taught music and piano in London and the home counties. After retiring from full-time work she lived for seventeen years in Gloucestershire, where she started to write, before moving to Oxfordshire in 2021. She has a grown-up daughter and son.”

My interest in the Mind-Body problem was inspired by reading Daniel Dennett’s “Consciousness Explained”. He proposes that qualitative experiences, such as a feeling of pain, do not exist. Although it /seems/ that we have this phenomenology, we do not actually do so. He also denies that we have conscious agency. I find these claims absurd, but his book made me realise that any explanation of mind in terms of physics must be extremely difficult.

I wrote a draft manuscript on /panpsychism/, which is the position that mind exists – in extremely primitive form – everywhere in the universe. I completed an MA degree at the University of Reading, writing my thesis on the Mind-Body problem, and used it to improve my manuscript, which was published as ‘Panpsychism’, 2011.

In my 2022 book, ‘Mind, Quantum, and Free Will’, my ideas are closely bound to contemporary physics. This gives my ideas credibility. Part II discusses science. Particular attention is paid to quantum theory, where I go back to the original papers of Einstein, Schrödinger, Bohr, and others, where they debate entanglement. I argue that Einstein made many significant contributions to this theory.

Over the years I’ve given talks and other presentations at international conferences. Please visit my table, N34, if you would like to discuss science, philosophy, or the Mind-Body problem, from any point of view. Your ideas and insights are most welcome.

After 40 years (and counting!) of writing scientific papers, books and patents where almost every sentence needs to be justified with a reference, I suppose I longed for being able to write something which did not have any boundaries. Having recently become a part-time consultant scientist and with all four children having now left our house, there is some time for me to let my mind wander through those things that do not need to be proved; do not have to be true. But the scientist in me hasn’t allowed me to stray that far from the truth or reality and that’s pretty much how I ended up writing ‘A Painkiller to Die For’ (2025). This was my second published novel after ‘A Practical Arrangement’ which came out towards the end of 2023 under the nom de plume of Verity Trevethan.

My third novel, ‘The Disappearance of Sarah Griffiths,’ has a publication date of 28th November and also has a smattering of science running through the plot. My editor has labelled this book as ‘Gone Girl meets Breaking Bad’ and I think I can see where she is coming from. It is a dark, domestic noir based around a young married couple whose comfortable existence is crumbling around them. The life changing events lead to the wife’s disappearance and a criminal investigation looking into the death of a small-time drug dealer. The novel asks questions to just how far we’ll go to protect the ones we love and the lives we’ve built and what we become when they start to fall apart.

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