John Dougherty (Chair) is the award-winning author of over thirty books for children, including fiction, picture-books, poetry, and educational reading scheme content. From 2013-2015, John chaired the Society of Authors’ Children’s Writers & Illustrators Group. He was one of the first Patrons of Reading in the UK and is a Founding Patron of the Chipping Norton Literary Festival. A resident of Stroud since 2004, John has been involved with the Stroud Book Festival since its inception and is a fervent supporter of, and campaigner for, a strong public library service.
John’s thoughts on libraries are here.
Dr Rachel Sargeant is an author of suspense fiction, including the Gloucestershire Crime Series. She holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham and is a judge for the Henshaw Press Short Story Competitions.
As a chartered librarian, she oversaw the design of two Gloucestershire school libraries and implemented study skills and reading for pleasure initiatives.
Before moving to Gloucester, she taught English at a university in Germany.
Previously, she ran a group of libraries and the mobile service in the London Borough of Bromley, led a lifelong learning project for Shropshire Libraries, and set up the Voices from Europe Festival, the forerunner to the Richmond upon Thames Literature Festival.
Hereward Corbett was born on a farm in Sussex and as a child spent many hours in Hastings Public Library. He has worked in bookselling since the late 1980s, and currently runs the two Yellow-Lighted Bookshops in Tetbury and Nailsworth. He is a slow but persistent reader, and is passionate about words, stories, and how they enable people to understand and change their lives.
Julian Hasler is an arable farmer living near Tetbury; with a degree in Sciences and English Literature he has been a voracious reader from an early age.
See Julian’s comments on libraries here.
Marianne Hinton was born in New York City, where she was director of a gallery that represented artists who painted murals, portraits, furniture, walls, floors, indeed any surface on which an illusion could be sustained – hence the gallery name: Trompe L’Oeil, which translates as to ‘fool the eye’. She first came to London in 1976 to do the Sotheby’s Art Course. In 1991 she retrained as a ceramic restorer, again in London. Marianne was a member of the development board of the Gate Theatre, London, and was on the Cross Festival Advisory committee of the Cheltenham Festivals for 8 years. As befits a member of the London Library, she loves libraries, indeed she sometimes wishes she’d trained as a librarian.
Here are Marianne’s thoughts on libraries.
TASH HYDE
Tash is originally from North Lincolnshire via Derby & Toulouse. She moved to Gloucestershire in 2022 to work for Read for Good, a UK wide reading for pleasure charity based in Nailsworth. Tash was previously a children’s librarian for Derbyshire County Council, she worked as a Sure Start Librarian doing outreach to encourage families to fall in love with books & promote the benefits of libraries. Now Books & Libraries Lead, she leads on pilot project work with schools in Gloucestershire, liaison with publishers including books reviews and events, manages Brilliant Box of Books and is also a judge for Oscar’s Book Prize.
