Staff and Board
Contacts
Founder, Publisher & CEO
Ra Page
Publishing Manager
(Editorial and Commissioning, Rights & Sales)
Sarah Cleave
Sarah.Cleave[at]commapress.co.uk
Engagement Manager
(Digital, Events and Courses)
Becca Parkinson
Becca.Parkinson[at]commapress.co.uk
Publicist and Editorial Assistant
(Publicity, Editorial, Industry Day and HE outreach)
Zoe Turner
Zoe.Turner[at]commapress.co.uk
Reviewers - sign up to our Advance List!
Operations Officer
(Office Management, Book-keeping, IT support)Basma Ghalayini
Basma.Ghalayini[at]commapress.co.uk
Editor at Large
Orsola Casagrande
Consultant Editors
Sarah Eyre
Dr Ana Miller
Trudi Shaw
Design
Dave Eckersall, with additional design work by Maria Crossan, Matt Roeser, Lisa Romero and Steve Moyler.
Website
Alex Kelly, Oxygen Computers.
If you're not sure which person you need to contact, email:
info[at]commapress.co.uk
Patrons
Maxine Peake
Bolton-born and RADA-trained actress Maxine Peake has enjoyed a prolific career in theatre, television, radio and film with many career highlights, including The Theory of Everything, Shameless, Dinnerladies, Three Girls, Peterloo and many other award-winning TV dramas and theatre productions. Peake is a feminist and socialist and has often brought these views into her work.
Courttia Newland
Courttia Newland was born in West London where he still lives and which inspires much of his writing. He is the author of three acclaimed novels: The Scholar, Society Within and Snakeskin. His short stories have appeared in several anthologies. He is also the co-editor of IC3: The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain. Newland has, with his band of actors and an experienced director, cut his teeth in the world of theatre with his company, The Post Office Theatre Co. He was Fellow at the London College of Communication until December 2004 and works with selected Further Education partners in west London.
The Board
Sarah Jane Eyre (Chair)
Sarah is an artist and lecturer, and a co-founder of Comma Press, with Ra Page. She is Programme Leader for BA (Hons) Photography at Blackpool and the Fylde College, and has been working in the Further and Higher Education sector for 9 years. She also has twelve years of experience of working in the book trade, being the former Sales and Marketing Manager of Carcanet Press, and art buyer for Waterstone’s, Deansgate. She graduated from Nottingham Trent University with a BA (Hons) in Photography, and has an MA in Documentary Film Production from University of Salford. Sarah has been involved in the region’s creative industries for 18 years, she hasworked as a photography studio assistant, an art workshop leader (for Castlefield Gallery, Manchester Gallery, Cornerhouse Gallery), co-organiser for Redeye: Northwest Photography Network’s exhibition masterclass programmes (in partnership with Harris Gallery, National Media Museum and Gallery Oldham), and set up Kiosk Gallery, an artist run pop - up exhibition space in Manchester. She has been involved with numerous Arts Council supported collaborative projects, with other artists and communities, including Bitmapping at Cornerhouse and Mid Pennine Gallery, and site specific projects with A Family Of.
Kavita Bhanot grew up in London, lived for many years in Birmingham, then moved to India, where she directed an international literature festival and helped to set up India’s first literary agency. She recently completed a PhD at Manchester University, in Creative Writing and Literature. Her short stories and non-fiction have been published in anthologies, magazines and journals, two of her stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and she is the editor of the short story collection Too Asian, Not Asian Enough (Tindal Street Press, 2011). She is a reader with The Literary Consultancy and a regular book reviewer for The Independent.
Ruth is an award winning cultural producer, activist and social entrepreneur. She is Co-Director of Place of War - a support system for community artistic, creative and cultural organisations in places of conflict, revolution and areas suffering the consequences of conflict. She was Founder and Director of Manchester based independent record label, Fat Northerner Records (2003 – 2010); global grassroots music event and community founder and Director of Un-Convention; and Director of new seaside ‘festival of festivals’, One of These Days. Ruth is also a regular speaker at cultural festivals and events, including TEDX, British Council, International Alert, Primavera Sounds, Berlin Music Week.
Jill Lovecy
Jill is Labour Councillor for Rusholme Ward and a retired lecturer in Politics at the University of Manchester.
The Staff
Ra Page - CEO, Founder and PublisherSarah Cleave - Publishing Manager
Becca Parkinson - Engagement Manager
Becca joined us straight from finishing her undergraduate degree at Lancaster University. She volunteered as Secretary then Chair of the Society of Young Publishers North branch (2017-2019) and in July 2018 received a Print Futures Award from The Printing Charity. Becca was longlisted for a London Book Fair Trailblazer Award in 2019 and 2020, and was also accepted onto the British Council's International Publishing Fellowship (2019-2020). In 2021 she became a Trustee of Manchester Literature Festival.
Zoe Turner - Publicity and Outreach Officer
Zoe graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University with a BA in English Literature having developed a specific interest in contemporary poetry. She went on to complete a Masters in Film and Television: Research and Production at the University of Birmingham. Zoe has previously run workshops to encourage community engagement with short form writing, and has worked alongside organisations such as Ort Gallery and The Barber Institute of Fine Arts to create films for digital engagement. She has also programmed film events for HOME and Flatpack Festival. In May 2019 she took over as organiser and co-host of Verbose, an award-winning spoken word night based in Manchester. In July 2019 she received a Print Futures Award from The Printing Charity and in January 2020 she was longlisted for a London Book Fair Trailblazer Award. In August 2020 she joined online feminist magazine The F-Word as their fiction editor and in 2021 she became a mentor for Arts Emergency.
Editor at Large
Orsola Casagrande is a journalist, filmmaker, and activist. As a journalist, she worked for 25 years for the Italian daily newspaper il manifesto, and is currently co-editor of the web magazine Global Rights. She writes in Italian, English, Spanish and Turkish, and speaks Kurdish and French, as well as having basic conversational skills in Farsi and the Basque language. Based between Barcelona, Venice and Havana, Orsola writes regularly on Spanish, Catalan and Basque politics, as well as the Colombia peace process. She has collaborated with international peace mediator Brian Currin on peace negotiations in the Basque country, Kurdistan, and Colombia. She was a curator of Planet K, the Kurdish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2009, has translated numerous books (including The Book of Havana), as well as written several of her own. http://www.globalrights.info/Consultants
Sue Fletcher - Marketing & Publicity
Sue is communications and engagement specialist with over 15 years' experience in creative, not-for-profit and education sectors. She has considerable knowledge of fundraising and communications for effective income development, and significant strategic experience as manager and as volunteer chair of Community Arts North West and Manchester Craft and Design Centre. She is currently Head of Marketing and Communications at Oldham Colliseum Theatre and acts as a consultant for Comma Press. She has previously provided training for PANDA, University of Manchester, and Salford University, and mentored arts professionals at various institutions including Octagon Theatre, Bolton, Walk The Plank and Z-arts.
Martyn Amos
Martyn Amos is a Professor of Computer and Information Sciences at Northumbria University. He contributed to Comma anthologies Litmus and Bio-Punk, and co-edited Beta Life. In 2002 he took up a lectureship in bioinformatics at the University of Exeter, before moving to Manchester Metropolitan University in the summer of 2006, first as a Senior Lecturer before being promoted to Reader in 2010, and then to Professor in 2012. In 2018, he returned to his North-Eastern roots, and took up his current position at Northumbria. He works at the intersection(s) of computer science, biology, engineering and architecture.
If you are applying for a work experience placement please include your CV, cover letter and availability in an email to info[at]commapress.co.uk. We will try and respond to everyone but apologies if you don't hear back from us immediately.
PLEASE NOTE: We are not currently able to offer work experience placements due to capacity for the foreseeable future, apologies.
For information about submitting short fiction to Comma please see our Submissions Guidance under 'Resources'.