Steve Timms was born in Manchester, grew up in the town of Oldham, and studied Theatre at the University of Huddersfield. In 1997 he won The Independent on Sunday's Young Journalist of the Year award, and later worked as a freelance theatre critic for City Life Magazine (2000-2005), and also The Big Issue magazine. His plays include Filthy Lies, Clean Breasts (also actor, Edinburgh Fringe, 1998); American Beer (broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January 2000); and Everyone’s Paranoid (Contact rehearsed reading, 2005). Three of his plays have been produced at the 24-7 Theatre Festival in Manchester: Detox Mansion, Lovesick, and Temp/Casual: The latter graduated to a full length, Arts Council funded production at Contact Theatre (2010). The Distance Between Stars was staged at the Kings Arms Theatre, Salford in November 2014 by Organised Chaos. Recently he won a new fiction bursary from the Northern Writers Awards for his first novel, ‘Carbolic.’ He is a recipient of the Peggy Ramsay award.