Andy Croft

Andy Croft (born 1956) is a writer, editor, and poet based in the north-east of England.His books include Red Letter Days, a history of British political fiction of the 1930s. Other books include Out of the Old Earth, A Weapon in the Struggle, Selected Poems of Randall Swingler, Comrade Heart, After the Party, A Creative Approach to Teaching Rhythm and Rhyme and Forty-six Quid and a Bag of Dirty Washing. He has written seven novels and forty-two books for teenagers, mostly about football.
Books of poetry include Nowhere Special, Gaps Between Hills (with Mark Robinson), Headland, Just as Blue, Great North, Comrade Laughter, Ghost Writer, Sticky, Three Men on the Metro (with W. N. Herbert and Paul Summers) and Nineteen Forty-eight (with Martin Rowson). He has edited several poetry anthologies, including Red Sky at Night (with Adrian Mitchell), North by North East (with Cynthia Fuller), Not Just a Game (with Sue Dymoke), The Night Shift (with Michael Baron and Jenny Swann), Speaking English: Poems for John Lucas, Everything Flows: A Celebration of the Transporter Bridge in Poetry and A Modern Don Juan: Cantos for these Times by Divers Hands (with Nigel Thompson) .
Writing Residencies include the Hartlepool Headland, the Great North Run, the Southwell Poetry Festival, the Combe Down Stone Mines Project, HMP Holme House and HMP South Yorkshire.He has given many poetry readings, including readings in Paris, Moscow, Potsdam, Sofia, Novosibirsk, Kemerovo, New York and London's Poetry International. He writes a regular poetry column for the Morning Star, is director of the T-junction international poetry festival, and he runs Smokestack Books.