John Mair publishes a range of books on topical subjects such as the BBC; popularism and the media and the popular Jericho book – a new edition will be published shortly. Other books include A history of Rum and a book about Inspector Morse including a series of walks around Oxford. He also produces the famous Jericho Tea towel. John Howson’s book of his education blog will also be on sale on Stall N36.

“Deana Luchia is an author, editor and journalist. Her non-fiction books about dogs are informative, wise and funny, whilst her novels are quirky, poignant stories about misfits.
Deana offers a wide range of editing services and teaches creative writing classes. She also writes freelance features including celebrity interviews, travel and lifestyle pieces.”

Matt Wakefield is a British television writer and novelist. Between 2012 and 2024, he was one of the core writers on the BBC drama Doctors, contributing 70 episodes. Coming Attractions, published in April 2026, is his debut novel, inspired in part by his childhood experiences of making short films on Super 8.

Set in the mid-1980s, the novel follows thirteen-year-old Will Sheridan, who builds a cinema in his bedroom using a Super 8 projector and abridged Hollywood reels. When his father gives him a camera, Will sets out to make a three-minute vampire movie, only to discover that life is far harder to direct than a film.

Witty, bittersweet and sharply observed, Coming Attractions is a coming-of-age story about first love, friendship, family and the consolations of cinema – and about the painful gap between the reassuring worlds we create for ourselves and the complexities of real life.

The novel has received an enthusiastic response from early readers, earning five-star Amazon reviews that praise its humour, emotional depth and evocative portrayal of growing up in the 1980s.

‘Life is serious, but is not to be lived too seriously’. Serious or humorous, my poems are always good-natured.

I write when I have something to say, and I feel I have found the right way to say it. It’s about having fun with words and meaning, using words skilfully to say things differently, and saying the familiar in unfamiliar ways.

In 2017 I self-published a collection of poetry and wit as Particles of Light, with a 2nd edition in 2025. The book has been well received and has sold well in my local bookshops.

Intersecting Lines, my second collection, was traditionally published by indie publisher Beercott Books in 2021. In 2025 Beercott Books published my third collection, titled Reflections. These two collections continue to reflect my interest in people, love, the natural world, and the human condition.

In 2025 I also compiled together the sections of wit from my 3 collections and published it as Wit ‘n Word. There are poems to move you, to surprise you, and to make you laugh. The humorous poems and one-liners are there for entertainment, to be enjoyed, though they often contain a ‘sting in the tail’. I hope readers will enjoy reading my poems and will feel I am putting their own experiences and emotions into words.

I read regularly at poetry ‘open mics’ and at local literary events, and I give talks about my poetry to community groups.

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.

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.