'The Essex Book Festival has done a huge amount for literature' - Poet Laureate Andrew Motion

'Proves that Essex is a really happening place' - George Monbiot

'One of the most imaginative book festivals' - The Bookseller

The Essex Book Festival: 'one of the ten best things to do this year' Good Housekeeping

* Co-ordinated for six years the biggest reading and writing festival in the Eastern Region with over sixty events across Essex, working with a wide range of authors from Germaine Greer, Joanne Harris and Irvine Welsh to Joanna Trollope, Billy Bragg and Tony Parsons.

* As Literature Manager for Essex County Council worked extensively with national literature and arts organisations, pubishers, funders and local government including writers' days with The Literary Consultancy

* Chair of National Association for Literature Development 2003 - 2006

* Board member of Writing East Midlands, 2009 +, a new writing agency for Central England.

* Current projects include the first Basildon Children's Book Festival with Jacqueline Wilson, Children's Laureate Michael Rosen, Francesca Simon, Anne Fine. Jeremy Strong, G.P.Taylor and others - the Eastern region's biggest-ever children's book festival - Off the Shelf, Adopt a Scientist and Adopt an Author, working with a team of writers over three months, with Basildon Excellence Cluster. Adopt an Author will excitingly now be running throughout the academic year from September 2009 in nearly twenty infant, junior and secondary schools.

The Eastern region's biggest-ever children's book festival - patron is Children's Laureate Michael Rosen.