Chiew-Siah Tei, a member of Scottish PEN, is a Malaysian born writer. Her first collection of prose, It's Snowing (Chinese) was published in 1998. This was followed by a collection of arts and film reviews in 2000, Secrets and Lies (Chinese). She has won awards for her Chinese prose, including the Hua Zong International Chinese Fiction Award and the National Prose Writing Competition. In 2002, she enrolled on the PhD in Creative Writing and Film Studies at Glasgow University. Her play Three Thousand Troubled Threads was staged at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2005. Her first novel, Little Hut of Leaping Fishes (Picador, 2008), was long-listed for the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize in 2007 and short-listed for the 2008 Best Scottish Fiction Prize.

Margaret Gillies Brown has had eight collections of poetry published {Outposts, Akros, Poetry Scotland, Argyll, Blind Serpent} and three books of prose {Argyll}. She emigrated to Canada in the late 1950s but returned to a Scottish farm where she still lives. She has been a member of Scottish PEN for over 25 years.'Emigrant Journey' was first published in her third collection of poetry Hares On The Horizon (Outposts).

Alan Gay, a PEN member, is a retired lecturer who lives in East Lothian. He is currently the Convener of Tyne & Esk Writers. His latest collection, The Boy Who Came Ashore (Dreadful Night Press), now in its second edition, commemorates East Coast fishermen caught at sea in the great storm of 1881.

Robin Lloyd Jones, a former president of Scottish PEN and recently-retired chair of its Writers in Prison Committee, writes fiction and non-fiction. Much of the latter stems from his mountaineering and sea-kayaking and love of wild places. Robin is working on a biography of mountaineer, writer and conservationist, W H Murray.

robinlloyd-jones.com

Abdul Muqadus is from Pakistan and has been seeking asylum in the UK for the past ten years. He is a member of the Knightswood-based Framework for Dialogue group. He was assisted in writing this story by Sue Reid Sexton.

Sue Reid Sexton lives and works in Glasgow. She worked as a counsellor specialising in trauma for over a decade and spent another decade working with homelessness. She is the author of four novels including two examining the effects of war on ordinary people and another about complicated grief. She has been published in a variety of forms, most recently in the Glasgow Voices edition of the International Literary Quarterly.

Ian Crockatt, a member of Scottish PEN, lives in North Aberdeenshire, and has published a number of collections of poetry.

Alan Gay: Identification Large and angular with ferocious expression. Tends to be a solitary bird. Voice Still searching. Sometimes heard uttering crow-like guttural calls rather like laughter. Breeding All year round. Mates for life. Average of three offspring. Habitat East coast, forests, cliffs and open country. Migratory. In summer often seen far out at sea. In winter perches in bars and haunts poetry readings with notebook. Food Irony.

Kusay Hussein is from Baghdad, Iraq. As a fully qualified civil engineer he worked for the American and British authorities building hospitals and schools for the Iraqi people until the security situation became such that he had to seek asylum in Britain where he has recently been given leave to stay indefinitely. He has published many short stories in Iraqi magazines.

'Arazeel Rains' is a collaboration between Kusay Hussein and Sue Reid Sexton. Kusay writes his stories in the best English he can and Sue edits and polishes them up.

Sue Reid Sexton lives and works in Glasgow. She worked as a counsellor specialising in trauma for over a decade and spent another decade working with homelessness. She is the author of four novels including two examining the effects of war on ordinary people and another about complicated grief. She has been published in a variety of forms.

Manjula Parekh was born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in 1940 and came to Edinburgh in 1968 to work as a radiographer. She has received the Millennium Fellowship Award and attended the creative writing course at Edinburgh University. She writes in Gujarati, Hindi and English. In recent years, she has developed her interest in watercolour, acrylic, silk and oil painting. She has arranged exhibitions of her work to raise funds for Alzheimer Scotland, Buddhist monastery, Equality Choice Action Group and Tsunami. Her first book of stories with illustrations of many of her paintings and drawings called Edinburgh Fables was published in 2001. 'The Tree That Died' has been edited by Fiona Graham.

Valerie Thornton writes poetry, short stories and creative writing textbooks. She has held two Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellowships at Glasgow University. Her tutoring embraces mainstream and specialist groups, school teachers and the OU. Her latest creative-writing textbooks are The Writer's Craft, and The Young Writer's Craft (Hodder Gibson). Her poetry collection is Catacoustics (Mariscat Press).