Announcing our new Advisory Board

We’re pleased to announce the establishment of our new Advisory Board. Made up of eight established/emerging creative professionals who we’ve worked with, the group will work in parallel to our formal Board of Trustees to better involve those we support in maintaining our quality, innovation and improving accessibility. 

The aims of the Advisory Board are to engage the artists and writers we support in our direction and decision making, provide greater accountability and feedback mechanisms, help us decide emphasis and actions in our services and widening access, and to gain more insight into the challenges faced by those we work with and how they might be addressed. 

The Advisory Board first met in September and will meet quarterly. We’re very grateful to them for their time and commitment.

Georgina Aboud is a writer and creative practitioner living in Hove. She is the recipient of the Moth Short Story Prize and a New Writing South:21 Fellowship. Her book ‘Cora Vincent’ was published as part of the Creative Future/Myriad Editions Spotlight Books series, and her work features in current and upcoming anthologies. Her latest commissions include collaborative pieces for the Brighton Festival; she was also awarded a Shifting the Gaze bursary from Writing Our Legacy, where she is a Changing Chalk Associate Artist.

Georgina has experience of teaching both online as well as in person in Brighton, Surrey and on the South Downs. She is currently working on a novel, and with the assistance of a recent Arts Council England grant, developing her first poetry pamphlet.

 

Shazia Altaf is a writer from the North of England. She studied History and English, has worked in libraries, government, call centres, as a shop merchandiser, as well as other things. She won the 2021 Creative Future Writers’ Award Platinum Prize in fiction. She is currently editing her debut novel, which was shortlisted for the inaugural Primadonna Novel Prize in 2021, and her work was also listed for the 2021 Exeter Short Story Prize for ‘Lepidoptera’.

Her short story ‘Selling Oil’ was published in the Bricklane New Writers Anthology 2022. Shazia has been awarded an Arts Council England Grant for her current work in progress, a historical fiction novel. 

 

Lisette Auton is passionate about telling the stories she struggled to find–those that reflect her Northern, working class, disabled and neurodivergent experience–and making sure that everyone can see themselves in, or are authors of, the stories that are being told. She’s an award-winning multidisciplinary artist based in Darlington, who does stuff with words as an author, playwright, activist, creative practitioner, film and theatre maker and performer. The focus of all her work is on place, process, and creative access.

Lisette is the author of three children’s books published by Puffin (Penguin Random House UK), and a fourth forthcoming in 2025. She was a 2019 Early Careers Fellow for Literature at Cove Park; on the TSS Publishing list of Best British & Irish Flash Fiction; and winner of The Journal Culture Award 2021 for Performance of the Year for her film commissioned by New Writing North/Durham Book Festival WRITING THE MISSING – A RIVER CYCLE. She is a TVCA Artist of the Year 2024-2025 which gives her time, support and funding to develop a novel and a play for adults. She writes plays for both children and adults including commissions for Alphabetti Theatre, Unfolding Theatre, Live Theatre and Queen’s Hall Arts Centre. 

https://lisetteauton.co.uk/ 

 

Karen Downs-Barton is a working-class Anglo-Romani writer specialising in poetry, travel and memoir. Her first book, Didicoy, based on her experiences of single parenthood and state childcare won the International Book and Pamphlet Competition in 2022 and was a Poetry Book Society recommendation. Her collection, Minx, has been acquired by Chatto & Windus for publication in March 2025. Karen is an experienced creative writing tutor and has worked in schools, King’s College London, Creative Future, Wiltshire Young Artists and the Shakespeare and Race Festival.

Karen won the Cosmo Davenport-Hines award in 2022, was long listed for the Ivan Juritz prize in 2023, highly commended in the AUB International Poetry Prize 2024 and is an alumni of Ledbury’s Voice Coaching programme. Karen’s writing is widely anthologised and has appeared in Tears in the Fence, The High Window, Rattle, Ink, Sweat and Tears, and The North amongst others. 

 

Yvonne J Foster is a neurodivergent visual artist, researcher and storyteller. She first began working with Creative Future in 2013, gaining support with exhibitions, publication, mentoring, talks, and workshops. She was invited to join the first iteration of the advisory group and over time became involved in other aspects of the organisation. She was a member of Creative Future’s board of trustees for eight years.

Following successful Arts Council England funding, she made a major change to my artistic practice, now focusing on a love of historical research and the hidden stories behind museum objects. 

www.yvonnejfoster.com  

 

Simon Maddrell is a writer, performer, editor and facilitator. Since 2019 Simon’s had over a hundred and fifty poems published in twenty anthologies and numerous publications including Acumen, AMBIT, Butcher’s Dog, Magma, Poetry Wales, Propel,  Stand, The Gay & Lesbian Review, The Moth, The Rialto, Under the Radar. 

Simon’s debut, Throatbone, was published in 2020 and Queerfella won The Rialto Open Pamphlet Competition. Isle of Sin (Polari Press, 2023); The Whole Island (Valley Press, 2023); a finger in derek jarman’s mouth (Polari Press, 2024) were all Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Selections.  Simon is a queer, neurodiverse, Manx man living with HIV in Brighton & Hove where he runs words for wellbeing workshops for people living with HIV. 

 

Tom Newlands is a multiply neurodivergent Scottish author. He is the winner of a London Writers Award and a Creative Future Writers’ Award. In 2021 he was selected for New Writing North’s ‘A Writing Chance,’ which aimed to showcase the most talented writers in the UK from under-represented backgrounds. His debut novel, Only Here, Only Now was a Guardian Book of the Day and is forthcoming in the USA, Netherlands and France. 

 

Sallyanne Rock is a queer, neurodivergent poet and freelance writer from the Black Country. She writes about domestic abuse, queer identity and religious trauma. Her poetry has been published widely in various journals and anthologies, and she has appeared at spoken word events across the West Midlands.

She works as a mentor, workshop facilitator and poet for hire, and has worked alongside organisations such as Writing West Midlands, Verve Poetry Festival and Creative Future. In 2019 she was awarded the gold prize for poetry in the Creative Future Writers’ Awards. Sallyanne’s debut pamphlet, Salt & Metal, is published with Fawn Press.

Find out more about the Creative Future team.