Our judges

James Wong

James Wong, ethnobotanist and star of BBC's Grow Your Own Drugs, is passionate about plants. His award-winning six-part series cooked up home-made herbal remedies for a variety of common ailments, as well as some great beauty fixes. James is also well known from his appearances on Countryfile, Gardeners' World, The Chelsea Flower Show, ITV's Alan Titchmarsh Show and BBC Breakfast.

The author of two internationally best-selling books, Grow Your Own Drugs and A Year With James Wong, James will be reading and judging the best of your relaxing stories for bedtime. Read more about James on www.jameswong.co.uk

Della Galton

Della Galton has been selling short stories for over 20 years. She sells
between 80 and 90 short stories a year to markets in the UK and abroad. Her
first two novels, published by Accent Press, are Passing Shadows (2006) and
Helter Skelter (2007. How to Write and Sell Short Stories, (2008) is on
its second edition. Della's latest book, The Dog with Nine Lives is a true
story.

Della also teaches creative writing, is a popular speaker at writers'
conferences across the UK and is the agony aunt for Writers Forum Magazine.
Her website is www.dellagalton.co.uk

Ann Burnett

Ann Burnett has published short stories, articles and children’s stories, as well as writing a novel, which she self-published, as part of her Masters in Creative Writing. She is an experienced Creative Writing tutor and is joint Vice-President of Ayr Writers’ Club, now celebrating its 40th year.

For five years, Ann wrote a Postman Pat story every week for a comic and wrote the Postman Pat annuals and Holiday Specials as well, a total of about 250 tales.

She has also been a scriptwriter for BBC Children’s Radio and TV, producing over 100 radio scripts, including four series of Radio Ulster’s popular Hurley Burley programme for the under 5’s and the two Hurley Burley television series that were also made. She also wrote scripts for BBC Radio Scotland’s schools programmes.

She adapted Tove Jansson’s Finn Family Moomintroll stories into four picture books based on the TV series and wrote two activity books to accompany them.

She loves travelling and picks up lots of ideas and settings for stories and articles from visits to distant climes. You can read some of her articles on www.suite101.com/profile.cfm/ann31266 and find out more about her on www.annburnett.co.uk. Her novel, Loving Mother, is available on Amazon.

Tracy McLoughlin

Tracy McLoughlin is editor of Your Healthy Living magazine, the UK's widest read natural health read.

Tracy is passionate about natural health and about helping people to live well through making informed health choices.

Having studied journalism at London's Goldsmiths College in her twenties, Tracy has worked in the natural health industry for 20 years now. She started as an editorial assistant on Health Guardian newspaper in the early 1990s and went on to be managing editor of Health Food Business trade journal, later specialising in organic and health features for a number of other publications.

Two years ago she became editor of Your Healthy Living, and enjoys writing and overseeing the publication's wide-ranging and well-informed natural health editorial.

In her spare time, Tracy writes a little poetry and reads a variety of fiction, from classic to contemporary. She does enjoy a good short story and is looking forward to reading all the competition entries.