The Management Committee is responsible for the overall running of the Society. The Chief Executive and her staff report to the Management Committee. The authors serving on the Committee are listed below.
Members wanting to raise policy matters with the Society are welcome to contact the Chief Executive in the first instance. Members with individual questions or queries on professional matters are encouraged to consult our Advisory Service, headed by Kate Pool, at any time.
After it's meeting on 15 January 2013, the Management Committee discussed and voted for the following nominations to fill the four vacancies: Nicola Beauman, Nell Leyshon, Andrew Lycett and Stewart Ross.
- Click here to read personal statements from each of the nominees
- Click here to read about nominations to the Management Committee
Anne Sebba (Chair) is a biographer, lecturer and journalist. She is the author of eight non-fiction books for adults, most recently That Woman (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2011), a biography of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor. Anne's biographies mostly focus on iconic women who have forged a place for themselves in history, from Mother Teresa to Lady Randolph Churchill. A former Reuters foreign correspondent, Anne read History at King's College, London University and her first job was at the BBC World Services in the Arabic Department. Being a journalist at heart, she has written for numerous newspapers in addition to two biographies for children, several short stories and introductions to reprinted novels. She has presented documentaries on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4. See: www.annesebba.com
Photo: © John Kerrison
Patrick Barwise is emeritus professor of management and marketing at London Business School, a visiting fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Oxford, and chairman of the consumer organization Which?. He has a range of research and consulting interests in management, marketing, and media. His book, Simply Better (co-authored with Seán Meehan, IMD, Lausanne), won the American Marketing Association’s 2005 Berry-AMA Book Prize. Their follow-up book, Beyond the Familiar, was published in March 2011. He is married to the social historian Catherine Horwood (Keeping Up Appearances, Gardening Women).
Dr Alison Baverstock is a former publisher, now Course Leader for MA Publishing at Kingston University. She has researched and written widely (for Kogan Page, Bloomsbury, OUP) about the processes of publishing, marketing, author motivation and practice – as well as parenting (Whatever! and It’s not fair! Piatkus) and understanding art (for Prestel). Her most recent research has been into self-publishing (The Naked Author, Bloomsbury, 2011) which she sees as likely to benefit authors in their creative process, often helping them gain objectivity and feedback, and more generally broadening an understanding of how publishing works within wider society. She is passionate about helping to promote a wider enthusiasm for reading, and has been involved in several reader development schemes; she was the founder of Well Worth Reading and www.readingforce.org.uk. In 2007 she received the Pandora Award for services to the publishing industry. See: www.alisonbaverstock.com
Andrew Crofts is a full-time author and ghostwriter. He has published more than 80 titles, a dozen of which have spent many weeks at the top of the Sunday Times best seller charts. As well as using traditional publishers to reach readers, he has also experimented with e-books, publishing The Fabulous Dreams of Maggie de Beer,(a prequel to his traditionally published The Overnight Fame of Steffi McBride), on Kindle, Wattpad and Smashwords, and has guided a number of international clients successfully through the minefield of independent publishing. His books on writing include Ghostwriting (A&C Black), which was extensively quoted by Robert Harris in The Ghost, and The Freelance Writer’s Handbook (Piatkus), which has been reprinted eight times over twenty years. In 2010 he wrote The Change Agent – How to Create a Wonderful World, a biography of James Martin, the futurologist and biggest ever private donor to Oxford University. Andrew lectures at Kingston University and frequently guests at writing workshops, literary festivals and in the media. He blogs regularly on matters pertaining to publishing, self-publishing and writing. See: www.andrewcrofts.com
Gregor Dallas Gregor Dallas is the author of many critically-acclaimed works of European history. Born in London, he was educated in Britain and the United States, has taught in American universities, and now lives in France where he set up a French section of the Society of Authors (SOAF) in 2006. See: www.gd-frontiers.net
Juliet Gardiner is a historian and writer. She was editor of History Today in the 1980s and continues to work as the magazine's review editor. She has also been an academic, publisher (at Weidenfeld & Nicolson) and, since 2001, a full time writer. Her books include the Penguin Dictionary of British History (ed.) Wartime: Britain 1939-45, The Children's War and most recently The Thirties: an intimate history and The Blitz: the British under attack. She has been shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and won the Audio Book of the Year Award in 2006 with Fiona Shaw's reading of Wartime. She is also a frequent speaker, reviewer for national newspapers and magazines and broadcaster both on radio and television and is one of the regular presenters of Nightwaves on Radio Three. Her historical consultancy credits include The 1940s House, The Edwardian Country House, Upstairs Downstairs (new series), Turn Back Time: The High Street and the film adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel Atonement. She is currently working on a book about the Home Front in Britain in the First World War - and lives in East London, fortunately fairly close to her three children and several grandchildren. See: www.julietgardiner.com
Philip Gross is a writer of many parts: poet, writer of fiction for young people, haiku and schools opera libretti, plays and radio short stories. His poetry has won a clutch of recent awards - The Water Table (2009) the TS Eliot Prize, I Spy Pinhole Eye, with photographs by Simon Denison (2009) Wales Book of the Year and Off Road To Everywhere the CLPE Award for children's poetry 2011. A new collection, Deep Field, deals with his refugee father's loss of language in old age. He is also the author of ten teenage novels - most recently The Storm Garden. He is Professor of Creative Writing at Glamorgan University, has worked with schools and adult groups for thirty years and brings to the committee an awareness of the needs of learning, aspiring, not-yet-established writers as well as his own experience of solo and collaborative work in many forms. See: www.philipgross.co.uk
Photo: © Stephen Morris
Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor and translator, with some thirty books to his name. He has written several works of non-fiction and one children's picture-book; translated a dozen novels from Portuguese, Spanish and French; and edited reference books for adults and reading guides for children and teenagers. His work has won him the Blue Peter Book Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Forthcoming books include translations from Angola, Brazil, France, Guatemala and Quebec, and a new reference book, The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature. A former chair of the Translators Association, he is currently programme director of the British Centre for Literary Translation; and on the board or council of a number of organisations including English PEN, Pop Up, Human Right Watch, Shakespeare's Globe and Modern Poetry in Translation.
David Kynaston was born in 1951, read Modern History at Oxford University in the early 1970s, and since then has predominantly been a self-employed historian. His books include four corporate histories (including a centenary history of the Financial Times), three books on cricket history and a four-volume history of the City of London, 1815-2000. He is currently engaged on a multi-volume history of Britain between 1945 and 1979. The first two volumes, Austerity Britain and Family Britain, were published in 2007 and 2009 respectively, and he is currently working on a third volume, Modernity Britain, to cover the years 1957 to 1963. He lives in New Malden (a suburb in south-west London) and is married with three children.
James Runcie is The Artistic Director of the Bath Literature Festival, which runs for ten days each Spring and features over 200 writers. He is the author of four novels (published by Harper Collins and Bloomsbury) and his six-part crime series, The Grantchester Mysteries, will be published by Bloomsbury beginning in May 2012. He also makes documentary films that have featured writers as diverse as J.K. Rowling, Hilary Mantel, J.G Ballard and Umberto Eco; as well as arts series with well known presenters across all the main television networks. He served on the Arts Council Literature Panel from 1991-1995 and is also a regular contributor to Saturday Review on Radio 4. See: jamesruncie.com
Photo: © Tim Cragg
Co-opted Members of the Management Committee
Lin Anderson (The Society of Authors in Scotland) has published eight novels and one novella featuring forensic expert Dr Rhona MacLeod, which have been translated into several languages. The latest, Picture Her Dead, is currently out in paperback. Her short stories have appeared in a number of collections. Dead Close was chosen for the Best of British Crime 2011 and is currently being developed as a film. Also a screenwriter, her film River Child won a student BAFTA and the Celtic Film Festival best fiction award. The Rhona MacLeod novels have been optioned by ITV as a crime series.
Other literary work includes a collection of short African stories, broadcast on BBC Radio, and featured in the 30th anniversary edtion of New Writing Scotland.
Lin has degrees from Glasgow University, Edinburgh University and The Screen Academy of Scotland. She is co-founder of Scotland's first international crime writing festival, Bloody Scotland. See: www.lin-anderson.com
Chris Barker represents the Educational Writers Group. After teaching English at the University of Belgrade, he worked for twelve years in educational publishing in the UK before becoming a full-time writer of English Language teaching materials. He has been a member of the Society of Authors since 1997 and is currently engaged in developing, with the help of the Society's staff and in consultation with UK educational publishers, a Code of Practice to replace the existing Educational Publishing Guidelines.
Maureen Freely (representing the Translators Association) is the author of six novels and three works of non-fiction. She is perhaps best known for her translations of five books by the Turkish novelist and Nobel Laureate, Orhan Pamuk and for her campaigning journalism after he and many other writers, scholars and activists were prosecuted for insulting Turkishness or the memory of Ataturk. Read more...
Helena Pielichaty (Pierre-li-hatty), representing the Children's Writers and Illustrators Group, never planned to be a writer. The seeds were sown as a teacher during the late 1970s/early 1980s when she wrote short plays and customised worksheets for her pupils. This created a nagging restlessness in her that she couldn’t fathom until she took maternity leave and moved to Nottinghamshire. In 1987, needing a diversion from discussing the merits of disposable nappies with other new mums, she enrolled on a creative writing course run by the Workers' Educational Association. The course, held in a leaky Scout and Guide Hut only lasted for six weeks but she describes it as ‘…like turning on a tap… one that I couldn’t turn off again.’ Helena has produced over thirty books for children across the age range. Her current series, Girls FC, is based around an under 11s all-girl football team. See www.helena-pielichaty.com
John Taylor (representing the Broadcasting Committee) runs Fiction Factory, an independent production company which specialises in drama and whose “landmark” productions include dramatisations of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time novels, and Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time. Recent productions include the Radio 3 feature Ghost Lines and a Drama on 3 dramatisation of W G Sebald's Austerlitz as well as several Radio 4 afternoon dramas and the returning series Chronicles of Ait. He has written for children’s theatre and his radio plays include A Darker Sister, Love's Executioner, Letters from the Ice Land, Lost Girls, The Villa Madeira, Markheim, and Rage on the Road. He recently wrote A Bottle on the Shore for R4 based on Karen Liebreich's book The Letter in the Bottle.
