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.

Sylvia named Coopers Oxford Marmalade Factory, ‘the Jam Factory’ when she established an Art and Antiques Centre with café, bookshop and repair services. The name has stuck! She’s best known locally for the ten year Oxford Castaway series in The Oxford Times. It brought together people who would usually never meet and she made it diverse which was rare then. Her novel, Sculpting the Elephant, is half set in Jericho and half in India. Sylvia is a campaigner for libraries and recently, with friends and the help of Korky Paul raised the money to build the first community library in west Kenya where her novel Not so Black and White is partly set. Her best-selling Brushstrokes in Time is a historical novel which tells the story of the courageous Stars artists (Beijing 1979). Her memoir has been endorsed by the journalist, Yasmin Alibhai Brown, the international poet Sudeep Sen and the history professor, Rana Mitter (Oxford and Harvard).

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.

I hope to display 3 books this time, one a personal account of living in and visiting Japan entitled ‘An Affair with a Village — the work of social anthropological fieldwork and the long-term relationships built up’. The other two are novels: the first the tale of a 1960s escapee from the expectation that a girl, even with a degree, should quickly settle down, marry and have children.

The book, ‘Sharing Worlds’, recounts the exciting life she discovers between Mexico and Scotland, a fascinating job she finds, but still the conflict with wanting eventually to fulfil that expectation.

The second novel, to be launched at the Fair, is a sequel, and recounts the peripatetic life of a young woman whose travels and troubles are symbolised by the book’s title, ‘Born at Sea’. Set in the last three decades of the 20th century, it touches on cultural conflicts, the (recovering) plight of indigenous languages, and the early days of Climate Change, all presented through the eyes of a girl growing up. Spolier alert/ promise: both novels draw on some of my own experience as a social anthropologist, but the second is an entirely invented story.

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.

Steve has spent his life trying to discover the secret of how to become a fully-functioning adult. He has so far failed. One thing he has learnt is that he ought to have tried writing a book forty years earlier than he did, although he also now realises that he should have become a celebrity first, as this would have made selling it much easier.

He currently has three comedy spy thrillers to his name, all published by Claret Press: A Very Important Teapot, set in Australia; Bored to Death in the Baltics, not set in Australia; and Poor Table Manners, which takes place in Cape Town. These feature an initially fairly hapless hero, Dawson, and a considerably less hapless heroine, Lucy, together with varied supporting casts, most of whom are not who they claim to be.

In 2025, Steve also released into the world a comedy-murder-mystery, Lazytown, set in an eccentric Oxfordshire village. And, in a departure from comedy, a UK based thriller, False Connections, featuring ex-MI5 agent, Mel Milano, may well be out before the summer book fair. This could be the first of a new series, although Dawson and Lucy are also planning another outing at some point.