Deborah Taylor, The Blue Pencil, is a freelance copy editor and proofreader based in Newbury, Berkshire. A member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading, she specialises in working with indie authors and small publishers across crime, memoir, and romance genres.

With a background rooted in the print industry, Deborah brings warmth, expertise, and a genuine love of language to everything she does. She supports self-publishing authors, combining meticulous attention to detail with a warm, encouraging approach—because great editing should feel like a collaboration.

I’ve written more than a few books, but writing about myself might be the hardest thing of all. Let’s start simply. I was born in Jamaica. No, I can’t run or sing, and if I tried, it wouldn’t be pretty.

My love of books began as soon as I could read on my own and discovered the power of stories. Surprisingly, it was my father who taught me to read, despite being dyslexic himself. He taught himself using newspapers and abandoned catalogues from the resorts where he worked as a carpenter. That’s where my love of words began.

As a teenager, I turned to reading to escape the emotional upheaval of my parents’ breakup. Writing soon followed, becoming a way to say the things I couldn’t speak aloud. I’m naturally shy, and writing became my voice.

For years, writing stayed a hobby. That changed when I returned to university to study English Literature and finally began taking my work seriously. Over the last two years, I’ve written and self-published around fourteen novels and novellas.

I write romance because happy endings gave me hope during difficult times, and I want to pass that feeling on. I write science fiction because, as a lifelong Trekkie and a Black woman, I rarely saw myself in the worlds I loved, so I created my own. I write around real life with a husband, two boys, work, and the PTA, usually at night when it’s quiet. And if I ever met an alien, I’d run. Jamaican style.

If you love heart, humour, romance, and a touch of sci‑fi chaos, I hope you’ll try one of my stories.

Mario Coelho is a award wining children’s book illustrator based in Oxford with several mainstream picture book publications including with the prestigious Oxford University Press and several independent publications with the very well known and acclaimed children’s poet John foster.

Very recently I have worked alongside the great illustrator Korky Paul for a publishing project with Epic Tales where we both illustrated several titles.

Kiera has always been fascinated by the ways words can be used to twist insanity into perfect sense, and thought she better take some responsibility and twist some of it back again.

I am proud to have published six books for 8-12 year old children, all set on the mysterious Island of Animaux. The island is located somewhere at the very edge of the world, although it has yet to be discovered. It is full of the strangest creatures having unending crazy, mad, funny adventures.

All the books have received wonderful reviews. The latest one is ‘Who’s There?” and as usual it contains five tales, the first following on from the last in the previous book, “The Other Side”.

In the new tales, Aubrey the Turkey is once again the centre of attention, with strong support from Clifford Platypus and Walli Hog. See how they go on an amazing journey, to help ten-year-old Daisy return to the real world. Watch Aubrey lose all his money to a sly fox and Douglas Duck almost become a shark’s snack. And delight as Aubrey, Clifford and Walli save their new friends’ business, much to Rick Rat’s annoyance.

I am delighted to once again be returning to the Oxford Indie Book Fair.

Timothy Adès is a prolific rhyming translator-poet with eleven books from French, German, Spanish, and awards for translating Victor Hugo, Robert Desnos, Jean Cassou, and Alfonso Reyes. His book of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets includes his translations into Inglish, with no letter E, on the facing page. His bookstall offers, also, many poetry books by other translators: many languages, mostly bilingual books, some beautifully illustrated. He is a trustee of Agenda, the great poetry magazine. He is on Facebook and YouTube. He will be speaking for ten minutes, presenting poems which he has translated from other tongues.