The Oxford Independent Authors are a mutually supportive group of writers who meet to share expertise, preserving independence and joining together at collaborative events. The focus of this group is on marketing, promoting, selling and raising the profile of our writers.

If you are an independent author or working towards becoming one and would like more information please send an email to oxfordindieauthors@gmail.com.

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.

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.

nü editions is a uk-based independent publisher that aims to introduce original, innovative poetical works that provoke thinking, through bilingual productions.

Angela has written extensively for the Oxford University Press Reading Tree Programme (mostly for the award-winning Readerful series). She has recently written two Stories for Maths titles. Scareground, her middle-grade novel was published in 2023 and nominated for the Historical Association’s Young Quills Award (Best Historical Fiction for Children). Angela teaches creative writing worldwide to children and adults, and will reopen her booking list in September. Hobbledown, the award-winning adventure park, is based on her children’s book of the same title.

In Teachers, Schools and Views on Education, John Howson brings together a year of sharp, timely reflections on the English education system at a moment of rapid change. Written as events unfolded, these commentaries capture the pressures facing teachers, the shifting demands on schools, and the policy decisions that shaped the national conversation throughout 2013.

With his trademark clarity and deep understanding of the teacher labour market, Howson offers readers a grounded, insightful narrative that connects policy to practice and national debate to classroom reality. From recruitment challenges to governance reforms, from curriculum shifts to workforce morale, this book provides a rare contemporaneous record of a pivotal year.

Essential reading for educators, policymakers, researchers, and anyone seeking to understand how the forces of policy and practice interact, this volume stands as both a historical document and a lens through which to view today’s ongoing debates.