Andy Croft has published seven books of poetry: Nowhere Special, Gaps Between Hills (with Mark Robinson), Headland, Just as Blue, Great North, On Your Marks and Comrade Laughter. His next, The Ghost Writer, is due in 2007. A long poem, Letter to Randall Swingler, was included in the Forward Book of Poetry 2002.

Edited anthologies include Speaking English, Holme and Away, Red Sky at Night (with Adrian Mitchell), North by North East (with Cynthia Fuller) and Not Just a Game (with Sue Dymoke). He has given poetry readings in Potsdam, Sofia, Moscow, Novosibirsk and London’s Poetry International. He runs Smokestack Books.

Other books are Red Letter Days; Out of the Old Earth; Selected Poems of Randall Swingler; A Weapon in the Struggle; Comrade Heart, a Life of Randall Swingler; new editions of Walter Brierley’s Means-Test Man, Harold Heslop’s Last Cage Down and John Sommerfield’s May Day. He has also written 35 books for teenagers, mostly about football. A children’s novel, Come On Danny! is due out next year.

A contributor to Kaleidoscope, Front Row and Late Night Currie, his poetry has been broadcast on BBC1’s The Politics Show, Radio 4 and Radio Five Live. He has written and presented many programmes for BBC Radio 4, including Red Letter Days; The Silver in the Stone; A Sense of Place; Dan, Dan, the Communist Party Man, Excluded and an adaptation of JB Priestley’s English Journey.

He has contributed to many newspapers and magazines including the Guardian, Independent, Listener, London Magazine, Marxism Today, New Statesman, Poetry Review, Red Pepper and the TES. He has written for the New Dictionary of National Biography and the Dictionary of Labour Biography. He writes a regular poetry column in the Morning Star.

Between 1983 and 1996 he taught and organised literature and creative writing classes on Teesside for Leeds University, where he directed a HEFCE-funded research project into creative writing and adult education. Since 1996 he has worked as a freelance writer and teacher of poetry, during which time he has worked in hundreds of schools. He has been active for many years in community writing projects on Teesside, and worked for several years as writer-in-residence at HMP Holme House in Stockton.

Other writing residencies include the Hartlepool Headland, the Great North Run, Middlesbrough’s 150th anniversary and the Southwell Poetry Festival. Two verse-plays, Smoke! and Horty Porty, were recently performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Contact: andy.croft@ntlworld.com