John Yeoman Male

Dr John Yeoman, PhD Creative Writing, is a total rogue. His first adventure when leaving Oxford university with an MA in English literature was to host a witchcraft cabaret in a London cellar. This so enchanted him with devilry that he took up a career in public relations. Across 42 years he has edited a newspaper, chaired a big PR consultancy and trained several thousands of people to write for fame, fun and occasionally fortune.

For fifteen years he ran Britain's largest self-publishing business and earned up to $1.4 million annually from his own living room. (Oh, thou of little faith! If you're sceptical, send him a nice email and he'll point you to its accounts at Companies House.)

He founded Writers' Village in 2009, now one of the world's largest short fiction contests. It's no coincidence that its blog is titled the Wicked Writing Blog and it hosts guest posts every week from every best-selling author who is not ashamed to show their face there.

He lives in central England with his wife Celia, a dynasty of children and a tortoise. His passions include Jacobethan literature, heirloom vegetable gardening and antique wines.

The villain should properly be addressed as Dr John Yeoman, MA Oxon, MA (Res), MPhil, PhD, FSRS. But you didn't want to know that, did you? Quite right. After all, in the time you've wasted reading his biography here you could have been enjoying his posts (also here) which are triumphs of wit and erudition.