THE LITERARY CONSULTANCY - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Director

Aki Schilz has a BA in English and French Literature and an MA in Creative Writing. After working in various administrative roles, and as a copywriter for a large advertising agency, she trained as a workshop facilitator for a youth arts charity where she delivered workshops for clients including the British Heart Foundation, Adobe Youth Voices, PEN International, and Asia House. Aki completed a number of publishing placements (among them Granta Books and Literary Review) before working as Acquisitions Assistant at Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Aki's short fiction, non-fiction and poetry have appeared in print and online in a number of publications. She is the winner of the inaugural Visual Verse Prize, supported by Andrew Motion, and the inaugural Bare Fiction Prize for Flash Fiction, judged by Angela Readman. She is a Queen's Ferry Press Finalist and was featured in the Wigleaf Top 50 as selected by Roxane Gay in 2015. She is the co-founder of the Saboteur Award-shortlisted #LossLit digital literature project. An article by Aki on women writers and the value of time appeared as one of three main features in Mslexia‘s 20th anniversary issue in March 2019, and she has written for the Bookseller, PEN Transmissions, and the Young Writer of the Year Award website. She is a Bridport Prize First Novel Award shortlist judge, and is on the judging panel for the Creative Future Writing Awards, a national literary competition which celebrates talented writers who lack opportunities. Aki has been a visiting lecturer at various universities, and gives talks regularly at publishing conferences and events about editing, publishing, and literature development, with a special interest in promoting inclusive culture in the publishing sector. In 2018, Aki was announced as one of the #FutureBook40, a list of the UK's top 40 innovators in publishing, for her work at TLC and her #BookJobTransparency campaign. In 2019 she was shortlisted for the Kim Scott Walwyn Prize for women in publishing, and in 2020 was announced as one of the Top 100 Ethnic Minority Future Leaders in the EMpower list. She has twice featured in the Bookseller 150, an annual list of the 150 most influential people in UK publishing (2020; 2021). She is an alumna of the Boosting Resilience programme run by the Culture Capital Exchange in association with Manchester Metropolitan University, and has completed a Clore Short Course in Leadership Skills, and a Practical Accounting and Finance for Entrepreneurs course with Bayes (formerly Cass Business School). Aki has sat on boards for the award-winning experimental publisher Penned in the Margins, and for Poetry London. She is currently Vice Chair of English PEN. In 2023, Aki was signed in as an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, for services to literature. Aki joined the TLC team in 2012, and in 2013 was appointed Editorial Services Manager of the company. She became Director in 2017, succeeding TLC's cherished longstanding Director and Founder Rebecca Swift, in line with Rebecca's wishes. In 2017 Aki founded the Rebecca Swift Foundation in memory of her former boss and mentor. The Foundation is now managed by a Board of Trustees and Project Manager, and offers a biennial Women Poets' Prize. Aki is in charge of all business strategy, programming and partnerships at TLC. She co-ordinates the national Arts Council England-funded Free Read Scheme with TLC's regional literature partners, oversees all editorial service provision, and curates the events programme. She also manages TLC's Quality Manuscript writers whom she represents to literary agencies TLC has a working relationship with, and welcomes approaches from agents wishing to hear more about this side of our work, as well as from prospective partners and sponsors who wish to support TLC's work.

Job Titles:

• Member of the TLC Advisory Board

Anna Korving is an entrepreneur and senior business communications leader who has led businesses and teams across the PR, medical communications and healthcare advertising space in London and New York. In 2001 she co-founded and built a multiple award-winning group of agencies which was acquired in 2010 by the media holding company Publicis Groupe. Since 2018 she has been working as an NED/Board Advisor to a number of businesses and senior leaders within the communications agency space. Anna also writes women's fiction and her work has been longlisted in several creative writing competitions including the Blue Pencil First Novel Award, the Primadonna Prize and the Yeovil Novel Prize.

Job Titles:

• Member of the TLC Advisory Board
• Editor and Writer. a Former Publisher and Commissioning Editor

Aruna Vasudevan is an editor and writer. A former publisher and commissioning editor, she set up The Literary Shed in 2013 to work independently with UK- and US-based publishers and writers on fiction and non-fiction. Her clients include Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Orion, Hodder & Stoughton, Bloomsbury and Virago. She is the author of several books, published under pseudonyms, and has ghostwritten celebrity biography. She writes on a range of subjects, including the arts, literature, film, food and travel. Aruna is a strong advocate of emerging writers and holds workshops to encourage and support new writing.

Job Titles:

• Programmes & Marketing Assistant
• Writer

Cairo is a writer, event producer and social entrepreneur with a focus on marginalised womxn and Black Communities. She is an award-winning playwright and poet, and alumna of the prestigious Apples and Snakes Writing Room and The Soho Theatre's Writer's Lab. Cairo founded Black Girls Brunch UK, a community interest company that curates safe spaces and events for Black Women in the UK to ‘Redefine the Room' and have a seat at their own table.

Job Titles:

• Member of the TLC Advisory Board

Helen Cosis Brown was TLC co-Founder Rebecca Swift's partner. She was a Professor of Social Work at the University of Bedfordshire until 2018, and now chairs a local authority adoption and fostering panel, and is the agency decision maker for two independent fostering agencies. Her research and publications are in the field of adoption and fostering. She worked as a social worker, and a social work manager, in inner London before moving into social work education. She managed social work programmes at the University of Hertfordshire, South Bank University and Middlesex University. She has been a non-executive director of the Albert Kennedy Trust, and the London Gypsy and Traveller Unit, and currently sits on the CoramBAAF Publications Advisory Group

Job Titles:

• Fellow at Leicester University

Dr Kavita Bhanot is ECR Leverhulme Fellow at Leicester University. She is editor of The Book of Birmingham (Comma Press)and Too Asian, Not Asian Enough (Tindal Street Press) and co-editor of the Bare Lit Anthology (Brain Mill Press). She is currently co-editing an anthology on decolonising translation with Jeremy Tiang (Tilted Axis/National Centre for Writing ). Her fiction, non-fiction and academic work has been published, performed and broadcast widely, including the landmark essay ‘Decolonise not Diversify' and her Tedx Talk ‘Reading, Writing and Self-Interrogation'. Kavita initiated and co-organised the Literature Must Fall Festival in Birmingham 2019 and founded the Literature Must Fall Collective. She has been an editor and mentor with The Literary Consultancy for ten years and her work with TLC has included as a literary scout, connecting talented authors with agents and publishers. Her first novel won third prize in the 2018 SI Leeds Literary Prize. She was awarded the 2018 Tilted Axis Emerging Translator by the National Centre for Writing. She sits on the advisory board for Comma Press. Kavita co-developed, and co-delivers, TLC's Ethical Editing training for publishers.

Job Titles:

• Head of Writing Services

Joe Sedgwick has a Bachelor's degree in English Literature and American Studies from Manchester University. He holds an MA in Publishing from Kingston University. After leaving the University of Manchester, he worked as a Marketing Assistant for a housebuilding company before leaving to pursue a career in publishing. Joe has also undertaken internships at Palgrave MacMillan and Bloomsbury. He has been a reader for Spread the Word's London Short Story Prize & Life Writing Prize, and has spoken at Kingston University, The Asian Writer Festival, & New Writing North's Newcastle Writing Conference. He enjoys reading literary fiction and non-fiction. Joe manages TLC's core editorial and operational services, looking after its team of readers and mentors and overseeing all in-house processes. He also leads on TLC's marketing and communications strategies, working with advertisers, liaising with freelancers, and supporting the TLC events programme.

Job Titles:

• Member of the TLC Advisory Board
• Writer Co - Director

Julia Forster is a published novelist, a prize-winning poet and a writer development specialist who has worked in publishing for over twenty years. She joined TLC as a Reader in 2017, and with Aki Schilz, she co-devised Being A Writer, TLC's digital membership platform that prioritises writers' creativity and resilience. She has overseen year-long one-to-one mentoring of several writers on the TLC Chapter and Verse scheme. Julia has recently trained as an Analytic-Network Systems Coach and has also trained in Outdoor Intelligence for online coaching with Fi MacMillan of Wild Leadership. She has a Diploma in Spiritual Development from the Brenda Davies UK School and, in the quest for life-long enquiry, she is currently training with the Wise Goose Coaching School. Her passion is for creating the conditions for writers to explore the inner qualities of their character which enable them to write without barriers. In 2023, she is opening a writer-in-residence and writer retreat cabin on the edge of Snowdonia in mid-Wales.

Job Titles:

• Member of the TLC Advisory Board

Kerry Young's first novel Pao was a TLC read that was later published by Bloomsbury in 2011. Pao was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, the Commonwealth Book Prize and the East Midlands Book Award. Since then, Kerry has published two further novels with Bloomsbury - Gloria (2013) longlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, shortlisted for the East Midlands Book Award and nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award; and Show Me A Mountain (2016). Kerry's short story ‘Home Is Where the Heart Is' was published in Hometown Tales: The Midlands (Orion, 2018). Tomorrow Is Another Day was published in the Wasafiri 35 th Anniversary Issue (100, Winter 2019). Kerry is a Project Fellow at the Royal Literary Fund and an Arvon Tutor.

Job Titles:

• Member of the TLC Advisory Board

Penny Pepper is an acclaimed author, poet, performer & disability activist. A genre-defying and versatile writer, her work focuses on the examination of difference, inequality and identity. She tells stories we haven't heard, making others see life differently, always with humour and wisdom. Her champions include Jake Arnott, Margaret Drabble and Liz Carr. Penny published her groundbreaking memoir, First in The World Somewhere with Unbound and a poetry collection, Come Home Alive, with Burning Eye Books. She is now signed to The Good Literary Agency where she is represented by Abi Fellows who is immersed in taking Penny's extraordinary novel to publishers.

Job Titles:

• Founder
• Director 1996 - 2017. in Memoriam

Rebecca Swift read English at Oxford University and worked as an editor and writer. For seven years she worked at Virago Press, where she first conceived of the idea for TLC. Rebecca served as TLC Director from its inception in 1996 until her death in April 2017 aged 53, after a short illness. She was a cherished and well-respected member of the literary and publishing community, and a tireless champion of writers and literary values. TLC's continuing work honours her legacy. For Chatto & Windus Rebecca edited a volume of letters between Bernard Shaw and Margaret Wheeler, Letters from Margaret: The Fascinating Story of Two Babies Swapped at Birth (1992) and Imagining Characters: Six Conversations about Women Writers, a book of conversations between writer A.S. Byatt and psychoanalyst Ignes Sodre (1995). Rebecca also had poetry published in Virago New Poets (1990), Vintage New Writing 6 (1995), Driftwood, US (2005), Staple (2008), InterlitQ (2010) and India's online Talking Poetry (2011). A libretto written by Rebecca was funded by the Arts Council England, and commissioned by the Lontano Ensemble: the opera ‘Spirit Child', composed by Jenni Roditi, was performed at Ocean in Hackney, London in 2001. Rebecca wrote and reviewed for The Independent on Sunday and The Guardian. A biography of Emily Dickinson, Dickinson: Poetic Lives, came out in February 2011 with Hesperus Press and a piece for Granta online, ‘Generations‘ appeared June 2011. Rebecca also appeared at numerous literary festivals and on many panels talking with famous energy and passion about the work of TLC and the relationship between writers and the publishing industry. She taught poetry at West Dean College of Further Education, life-writing for the Hackney Music Development Trust and ‘Approaches to Publication' for Skyros Writers' Lab and TLC's own Literary Adventure holiday. In 2016, she was selected as one of Whitefox's 25 ‘Unsung Heroes of Publishing‘. She was also an Emeritus Trustee of the Writers' Centre Norwich and Trustee of the Maya Centre whose fundraising efforts and service provision she supported actively for many years, as well as being a member of the prestigious Speakers for Schools. In 1999 she completed an M.A. in Psychoanalytic Studies at the Tavistock Centre in London and UEL. Her thesis title was ARE YOU READING ME? An Exploration of the Relationship between people who write and those who read them in publishing and related industries. The thesis was published as a limited edition printed book, supported by IngramSpark and Head & Heart, as part of TLC's 20th Anniversary celebrations and launched at the ‘What's Your Story?' conference in November 2016.

Job Titles:

• Member of the TLC Advisory Board

Tim worked for almost thirty years in local government, including five years as deputy chief finance officer at West Sussex County Council. He wrote fiction alongside the day job throughout his working life, and in 2019 left his finance career to become a full-time writer. His seven novels cover the fantasy and crime genres, and he has been published by Macmillan New Writing and SpellBound Books, as well as having extensive self-publication experience. He has also written non-fiction on introversion and local government finance.